o3 Max vs Qwen3-Max Turbo: which model should you choose?
We compared o3 Max and Qwen3-Max Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. o3 Max has the stronger average benchmark score; Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
o3 Max
o3 Max is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 2,000,000-token context window, costs $17.82 per million input tokens and $90.55 per million output tokens, and averages 84.8 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $17.82 / 1M
- Output
- $90.55 / 1M
- Context
- 2,000,000
- Avg score
- 84.8
- 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 | o3 Max | Qwen3-Max Turbo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $17.82 | $17.70 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $90.55 | $63.95 | B |
| Context window | 2,000,000 | 1,000,000 | A |
| Max output | 128,000 | 128,000 | Tie |
| Average score | 84.8 | 84.7 | A |
| Arena Elo | 1465.2 | 1456.9 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
o3 Max wins 7, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 5, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | o3 Max | Qwen3-Max Turbo | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.9 | 86.8 | 1.9 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| GPQA Diamond | 82.7 | 78.3 | 4.4 | o3 Max |
| SWE-bench Verified | 71.8 | 75.9 | 4.1 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| HumanEval | 89.8 | 92.5 | 2.7 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 87.0 | 91.9 | 4.9 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| AIME 2025 | 86.2 | 81.2 | 5.0 | o3 Max |
| LiveCodeBench | 76.4 | 76.8 | 0.4 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| IFEval | 92.5 | 92.1 | 0.4 | o3 Max |
| TruthfulQA | 87.3 | 86.3 | 1.0 | o3 Max |
| HellaSwag | 93.4 | 90.8 | 2.6 | o3 Max |
| MMMU | 80.8 | 78.8 | 2.0 | o3 Max |
| Arena Elo | 1465.2 | 1456.9 | 8.3 | o3 Max |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, o3 Max costs about $36.00 per million tokens and Qwen3-Max Turbo costs about $29.26. Qwen3-Max Turbo is roughly 19% cheaper than o3 Max. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
o3 Max has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens, compared with 1,000,000 for Qwen3-Max Turbo. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, o3 Max wins 7, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 5, and 0 are tied. On the index average, o3 Max leads Qwen3-Max Turbo by 0.1 points (84.8 versus 84.7).
The price picture favours Qwen3-Max Turbo. The context picture favours o3 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 o3 Max for quality-sensitive work and Qwen3-Max Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose o3 Max if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- You need the larger 2,000,000-token context window.
Choose Qwen3-Max Turbo if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
FAQ
Is o3 Max better than Qwen3-Max Turbo?
On the index average, o3 Max leads Qwen3-Max Turbo by 0.1 points (84.8 versus 84.7). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. o3 Max wins 7 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 5.
Which is cheaper, o3 Max or Qwen3-Max Turbo?
Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $29.26 per million tokens, versus $36.00 for o3 Max.
Which has the larger context window?
o3 Max has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens. Qwen3-Max Turbo has 1,000,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
o3 Max is proprietary; Qwen3-Max Turbo is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with o3 Max for quality-sensitive work and Qwen3-Max Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.