Head-to-head · frontier vs frontier

o3 Pro vs Qwen3-Max Turbo: which model should you choose?

We compared o3 Pro and Qwen3-Max Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. o3 Pro has the stronger average benchmark score; Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.

OpenAI

o3 Pro

o3 Pro is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $17.89 per million input tokens and $81.48 per million output tokens, and averages 85.8 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$17.89 / 1M
Output
$81.48 / 1M
Context
400,000
Avg score
85.8
Open weights
No
Full o3 Pro page
Alibaba Cloud

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
Full Qwen3-Max Turbo page

Specification comparison

Speco3 ProQwen3-Max TurboEdge
Input price / 1M$17.89$17.70B
Output price / 1M$81.48$63.95B
Context window400,0001,000,000B
Max output8,192128,000B
Average score85.884.7A
Arena Elo1471.91456.9A
Open weightsNoNoTie

Benchmark comparison

o3 Pro wins 9, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 3, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

Benchmarko3 ProQwen3-Max TurboGapWinner
MMLU-Pro84.386.82.5Qwen3-Max Turbo
GPQA Diamond78.778.30.4o3 Pro
SWE-bench Verified76.975.91.0o3 Pro
HumanEval90.692.51.9Qwen3-Max Turbo
MATH-50092.491.90.5o3 Pro
AIME 202583.581.22.3o3 Pro
LiveCodeBench82.476.85.6o3 Pro
IFEval90.992.11.2Qwen3-Max Turbo
TruthfulQA88.486.32.1o3 Pro
HellaSwag92.590.81.7o3 Pro
MMMU83.178.84.3o3 Pro
Arena Elo1471.91456.915.0o3 Pro

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, o3 Pro costs about $33.79 per million tokens and Qwen3-Max Turbo costs about $29.26. Qwen3-Max Turbo is roughly 13% cheaper than o3 Pro. 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 400,000 for o3 Pro. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, o3 Pro wins 9, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 3, and 0 are tied. On the index average, o3 Pro leads Qwen3-Max Turbo by 1.1 points (85.8 versus 84.7).

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 o3 Pro 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 Pro if

  • You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.

Choose Qwen3-Max Turbo if

  • 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 o3 Pro better than Qwen3-Max Turbo?

On the index average, o3 Pro leads Qwen3-Max Turbo by 1.1 points (85.8 versus 84.7). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. o3 Pro wins 9 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 3.

Which is cheaper, o3 Pro or Qwen3-Max Turbo?

Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $29.26 per million tokens, versus $33.79 for o3 Pro.

Which has the larger context window?

Qwen3-Max Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. o3 Pro has 400,000 tokens.

Are these models open weights?

o3 Pro is proprietary; Qwen3-Max Turbo is proprietary.

Which should I choose for production?

If you need a single default, start with o3 Pro 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.

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