Gemini 3 Flash Turbo vs Qwen3-Max Turbo: which model should you choose?
We compared Gemini 3 Flash Turbo and Qwen3-Max Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Qwen3-Max Turbo has the stronger average benchmark score; Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Gemini 3 Flash Turbo
Gemini 3 Flash Turbo is a frontier model from Google DeepMind. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $17.07 per million input tokens and $69.05 per million output tokens, and averages 84.1 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $17.07 / 1M
- Output
- $69.05 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 84.1
- Open weights
- No
Qwen3-Max Turbo
Qwen3-Max Turbo is a frontier model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $17.70 per million input tokens and $63.95 per million output tokens, and averages 84.7 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $17.70 / 1M
- Output
- $63.95 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 84.7
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Gemini 3 Flash Turbo | Qwen3-Max Turbo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $17.07 | $17.70 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $69.05 | $63.95 | B |
| Context window | 200,000 | 1,000,000 | B |
| Max output | 16,384 | 128,000 | B |
| Average score | 84.1 | 84.7 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1473.4 | 1456.9 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Gemini 3 Flash Turbo wins 6, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 6, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Gemini 3 Flash Turbo | Qwen3-Max Turbo | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 87.9 | 86.8 | 1.1 | Gemini 3 Flash Turbo |
| GPQA Diamond | 77.5 | 78.3 | 0.8 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 72.5 | 75.9 | 3.4 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| HumanEval | 90.6 | 92.5 | 1.9 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 87.6 | 91.9 | 4.3 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| AIME 2025 | 81.3 | 81.2 | 0.1 | Gemini 3 Flash Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 78.5 | 76.8 | 1.7 | Gemini 3 Flash Turbo |
| IFEval | 88.9 | 92.1 | 3.2 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| TruthfulQA | 87.4 | 86.3 | 1.1 | Gemini 3 Flash Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 89.5 | 90.8 | 1.3 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| MMMU | 83.0 | 78.8 | 4.2 | Gemini 3 Flash Turbo |
| Arena Elo | 1473.4 | 1456.9 | 16.5 | Gemini 3 Flash Turbo |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Gemini 3 Flash Turbo costs about $30.06 per million tokens and Qwen3-Max Turbo costs about $29.26. Qwen3-Max Turbo is roughly 3% cheaper than Gemini 3 Flash Turbo. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Qwen3-Max Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for Gemini 3 Flash Turbo. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Gemini 3 Flash Turbo wins 6, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 6, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Qwen3-Max Turbo leads Gemini 3 Flash Turbo by 0.6 points (84.7 versus 84.1).
The price picture favours Qwen3-Max Turbo. The context picture favours Qwen3-Max Turbo. 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-Max Turbo for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Gemini 3 Flash Turbo if
- You prefer Google DeepMind's tooling or already use it.
Choose Qwen3-Max Turbo 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 1,000,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 128,000-token output limit.
FAQ
Is Gemini 3 Flash Turbo better than Qwen3-Max Turbo?
On the index average, Qwen3-Max Turbo leads Gemini 3 Flash Turbo by 0.6 points (84.7 versus 84.1). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Gemini 3 Flash Turbo wins 6 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 6.
Which is cheaper, Gemini 3 Flash Turbo or Qwen3-Max Turbo?
Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $29.26 per million tokens, versus $30.06 for Gemini 3 Flash Turbo.
Which has the larger context window?
Qwen3-Max Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Gemini 3 Flash Turbo has 200,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Gemini 3 Flash Turbo is proprietary; Qwen3-Max Turbo is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Qwen3-Max Turbo for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.