o3 Reasoning vs Qwen3-Max Pro: which model should you choose?
We compared o3 Reasoning and Qwen3-Max Pro on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Qwen3-Max Pro has the stronger average benchmark score; o3 Reasoning is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
o3 Reasoning
o3 Reasoning is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $18.07 per million input tokens and $70.65 per million output tokens, and averages 85.3 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $18.07 / 1M
- Output
- $70.65 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 85.3
- Open weights
- No
Qwen3-Max Pro
Qwen3-Max Pro is a frontier model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $18.87 per million input tokens and $84.39 per million output tokens, and averages 86.2 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $18.87 / 1M
- Output
- $84.39 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 86.2
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | o3 Reasoning | Qwen3-Max Pro | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $18.07 | $18.87 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $70.65 | $84.39 | A |
| Context window | 200,000 | 400,000 | B |
| Max output | 16,384 | 8,192 | A |
| Average score | 85.3 | 86.2 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1456.9 | 1466.4 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
o3 Reasoning wins 3, Qwen3-Max Pro wins 9, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | o3 Reasoning | Qwen3-Max Pro | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 87.7 | 88.7 | 1.0 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| GPQA Diamond | 79.6 | 80.0 | 0.4 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| SWE-bench Verified | 74.1 | 75.6 | 1.5 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| HumanEval | 91.3 | 92.1 | 0.8 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| MATH-500 | 92.0 | 91.8 | 0.2 | o3 Reasoning |
| AIME 2025 | 80.5 | 85.4 | 4.9 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| LiveCodeBench | 82.7 | 81.0 | 1.7 | o3 Reasoning |
| IFEval | 90.6 | 93.2 | 2.6 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| TruthfulQA | 86.5 | 88.6 | 2.1 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| HellaSwag | 90.9 | 92.4 | 1.5 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| MMMU | 82.3 | 79.5 | 2.8 | o3 Reasoning |
| Arena Elo | 1456.9 | 1466.4 | 9.5 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, o3 Reasoning costs about $31.22 per million tokens and Qwen3-Max Pro costs about $35.25. o3 Reasoning is roughly 11% cheaper than Qwen3-Max Pro. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Qwen3-Max Pro has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for o3 Reasoning. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, o3 Reasoning wins 3, Qwen3-Max Pro wins 9, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Qwen3-Max Pro leads o3 Reasoning by 0.9 points (86.2 versus 85.3).
The price picture favours o3 Reasoning. The context picture favours Qwen3-Max Pro. 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 Pro for quality-sensitive work and o3 Reasoning for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose o3 Reasoning if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 16,384-token output limit.
Choose Qwen3-Max Pro if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- You need the larger 400,000-token context window.
FAQ
Is o3 Reasoning better than Qwen3-Max Pro?
On the index average, Qwen3-Max Pro leads o3 Reasoning by 0.9 points (86.2 versus 85.3). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. o3 Reasoning wins 3 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max Pro wins 9.
Which is cheaper, o3 Reasoning or Qwen3-Max Pro?
o3 Reasoning is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $31.22 per million tokens, versus $35.25 for Qwen3-Max Pro.
Which has the larger context window?
Qwen3-Max Pro has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens. o3 Reasoning has 200,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
o3 Reasoning is proprietary; Qwen3-Max Pro is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Qwen3-Max Pro for quality-sensitive work and o3 Reasoning for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.