Doubao 1.5 Pro Max vs ERNIE 4.5 Max: which model should you choose?
We compared Doubao 1.5 Pro Max and ERNIE 4.5 Max on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Doubao 1.5 Pro Max has the stronger average benchmark score; ERNIE 4.5 Max is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max is a multimodal model from ByteDance. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $14.93 per million input tokens and $73.69 per million output tokens, and averages 81.2 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.93 / 1M
- Output
- $73.69 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 81.2
- 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 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max | ERNIE 4.5 Max | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.93 | $14.41 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $73.69 | $53.71 | B |
| Context window | 400,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 4,096 | 65,536 | B |
| Average score | 81.2 | 80.6 | A |
| Arena Elo | 1447.5 | 1423.7 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max wins 10, ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 2, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max | ERNIE 4.5 Max | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 81.1 | 80.8 | 0.3 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.1 | 76.4 | 0.3 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| SWE-bench Verified | 70.7 | 68.9 | 1.8 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| HumanEval | 84.0 | 87.7 | 3.7 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| MATH-500 | 85.3 | 84.2 | 1.1 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| AIME 2025 | 80.4 | 79.5 | 0.9 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| LiveCodeBench | 73.5 | 73.0 | 0.5 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| IFEval | 90.2 | 87.1 | 3.1 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| TruthfulQA | 84.4 | 83.6 | 0.8 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| HellaSwag | 87.8 | 87.7 | 0.1 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| MMMU | 79.3 | 78.1 | 1.2 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
| Arena Elo | 1447.5 | 1423.7 | 23.8 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Max |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Doubao 1.5 Pro Max costs about $29.62 per million tokens and ERNIE 4.5 Max costs about $24.23. ERNIE 4.5 Max is roughly 18% cheaper than Doubao 1.5 Pro Max. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Doubao 1.5 Pro 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, Doubao 1.5 Pro Max wins 10, ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 2, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Doubao 1.5 Pro Max leads ERNIE 4.5 Max by 0.6 points (81.2 versus 80.6).
The price picture favours ERNIE 4.5 Max. The context picture favours Doubao 1.5 Pro 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 Doubao 1.5 Pro Max for quality-sensitive work and ERNIE 4.5 Max for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose Doubao 1.5 Pro Max if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- You need the larger 400,000-token context window.
Choose ERNIE 4.5 Max if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
FAQ
Is Doubao 1.5 Pro Max better than ERNIE 4.5 Max?
On the index average, Doubao 1.5 Pro Max leads ERNIE 4.5 Max by 0.6 points (81.2 versus 80.6). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Doubao 1.5 Pro Max wins 10 benchmarks, ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 2.
Which is cheaper, Doubao 1.5 Pro 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 $29.62 for Doubao 1.5 Pro Max.
Which has the larger context window?
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens. ERNIE 4.5 Max has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Doubao 1.5 Pro Max is proprietary; ERNIE 4.5 Max is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Doubao 1.5 Pro Max for quality-sensitive work and ERNIE 4.5 Max for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.