Command A Max vs Qwen3: which model should you choose?
We compared Command A Max and Qwen3 on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Qwen3 has the stronger average benchmark score; Qwen3 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
Qwen3
Qwen3 is a multimodal model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $5.04 per million input tokens and $22.52 per million output tokens, and averages 80.3 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.04 / 1M
- Output
- $22.52 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 80.3
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Command A Max | Qwen3 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.28 | $5.04 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $70.22 | $22.52 | B |
| Context window | 400,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 8,192 | 8,192 | Tie |
| Average score | 79.9 | 80.3 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1443.7 | 1420.9 | A |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Command A Max wins 5, Qwen3 wins 7, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Command A Max | Qwen3 | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.3 | 81.2 | 3.1 | Command A Max |
| GPQA Diamond | 74.5 | 77.7 | 3.2 | Qwen3 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 69.7 | 71.6 | 1.9 | Qwen3 |
| HumanEval | 83.4 | 87.0 | 3.6 | Qwen3 |
| MATH-500 | 85.7 | 86.5 | 0.8 | Qwen3 |
| AIME 2025 | 77.2 | 74.5 | 2.7 | Command A Max |
| LiveCodeBench | 73.1 | 73.8 | 0.7 | Qwen3 |
| IFEval | 86.7 | 85.6 | 1.1 | Command A Max |
| TruthfulQA | 82.2 | 80.4 | 1.8 | Command A Max |
| HellaSwag | 87.1 | 88.1 | 1.0 | Qwen3 |
| MMMU | 74.6 | 76.7 | 2.1 | Qwen3 |
| Arena Elo | 1443.7 | 1420.9 | 22.8 | 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 Qwen3 costs about $9.41. Qwen3 is roughly 67% 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 Qwen3. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Command A Max wins 5, Qwen3 wins 7, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Qwen3 leads Command A Max by 0.4 points (80.3 versus 79.9).
The price picture favours Qwen3. 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 Qwen3 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 Qwen3 if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is Command A Max better than Qwen3?
On the index average, Qwen3 leads Command A Max by 0.4 points (80.3 versus 79.9). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Command A Max wins 5 benchmarks, Qwen3 wins 7.
Which is cheaper, Command A Max or Qwen3?
Qwen3 is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $9.41 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. Qwen3 has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Command A Max is proprietary; Qwen3 is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Qwen3 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.