Command A Max vs ERNIE 4.5 Max: which model should you choose?
We compared Command A Max and ERNIE 4.5 Max on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. ERNIE 4.5 Max has the stronger average benchmark score; ERNIE 4.5 Max is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Command A Max
Command A Max is a multimodal model from Cohere. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $14.28 per million input tokens and $70.22 per million output tokens, and averages 79.9 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.28 / 1M
- Output
- $70.22 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 79.9
- Open weights
- No
ERNIE 4.5 Max
ERNIE 4.5 Max is a multimodal model from Baidu. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $14.41 per million input tokens and $53.71 per million output tokens, and averages 80.6 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.41 / 1M
- Output
- $53.71 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 80.6
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Command A Max | ERNIE 4.5 Max | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.28 | $14.41 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $70.22 | $53.71 | B |
| Context window | 400,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 8,192 | 65,536 | B |
| Average score | 79.9 | 80.6 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1443.7 | 1423.7 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Command A Max wins 5, ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 7, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Command A Max | ERNIE 4.5 Max | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.3 | 80.8 | 3.5 | Command A Max |
| GPQA Diamond | 74.5 | 76.4 | 1.9 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| SWE-bench Verified | 69.7 | 68.9 | 0.8 | Command A Max |
| HumanEval | 83.4 | 87.7 | 4.3 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| MATH-500 | 85.7 | 84.2 | 1.5 | Command A Max |
| AIME 2025 | 77.2 | 79.5 | 2.3 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| LiveCodeBench | 73.1 | 73.0 | 0.1 | Command A Max |
| IFEval | 86.7 | 87.1 | 0.4 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| TruthfulQA | 82.2 | 83.6 | 1.4 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| HellaSwag | 87.1 | 87.7 | 0.6 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| MMMU | 74.6 | 78.1 | 3.5 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| Arena Elo | 1443.7 | 1423.7 | 20.0 | Command A Max |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Command A Max costs about $28.27 per million tokens and ERNIE 4.5 Max costs about $24.23. ERNIE 4.5 Max is roughly 14% cheaper than Command A Max. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Command A Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for ERNIE 4.5 Max. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Command A Max wins 5, ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 7, and 0 are tied. On the index average, ERNIE 4.5 Max leads Command A Max by 0.7 points (80.6 versus 79.9).
The price picture favours ERNIE 4.5 Max. The context picture favours Command A Max. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with ERNIE 4.5 Max for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Command A Max if
- You need the larger 400,000-token context window.
Choose ERNIE 4.5 Max if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
FAQ
Is Command A Max better than ERNIE 4.5 Max?
On the index average, ERNIE 4.5 Max leads Command A Max by 0.7 points (80.6 versus 79.9). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Command A Max wins 5 benchmarks, ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 7.
Which is cheaper, Command A Max or ERNIE 4.5 Max?
ERNIE 4.5 Max is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $24.23 per million tokens, versus $28.27 for Command A Max.
Which has the larger context window?
Command A Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens. ERNIE 4.5 Max has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Command A Max is proprietary; ERNIE 4.5 Max is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with ERNIE 4.5 Max for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.