o4 Vision vs Qwen3-Max: which model should you choose?
We compared o4 Vision and Qwen3-Max on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. o4 Vision has the stronger average benchmark score; o4 Vision is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
o4 Vision
o4 Vision is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $17.01 per million input tokens and $90.05 per million output tokens, and averages 84.5 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $17.01 / 1M
- Output
- $90.05 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 84.5
- Open weights
- No
Qwen3-Max
Qwen3-Max is a frontier model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $17.37 per million input tokens and $94.30 per million output tokens, and averages 84.4 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $17.37 / 1M
- Output
- $94.30 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 84.4
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | o4 Vision | Qwen3-Max | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $17.01 | $17.37 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $90.05 | $94.30 | A |
| Context window | 200,000 | 400,000 | B |
| Max output | 4,096 | 4,096 | Tie |
| Average score | 84.5 | 84.4 | A |
| Arena Elo | 1473.2 | 1449.2 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
o4 Vision wins 7, Qwen3-Max wins 5, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | o4 Vision | Qwen3-Max | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.2 | 84.0 | 0.2 | o4 Vision |
| GPQA Diamond | 80.9 | 82.3 | 1.4 | Qwen3-Max |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.6 | 73.3 | 2.3 | o4 Vision |
| HumanEval | 88.9 | 88.5 | 0.4 | o4 Vision |
| MATH-500 | 91.7 | 89.7 | 2.0 | o4 Vision |
| AIME 2025 | 80.4 | 81.1 | 0.7 | Qwen3-Max |
| LiveCodeBench | 81.3 | 82.2 | 0.9 | Qwen3-Max |
| IFEval | 89.1 | 92.5 | 3.4 | Qwen3-Max |
| TruthfulQA | 85.3 | 83.4 | 1.9 | o4 Vision |
| HellaSwag | 91.2 | 92.9 | 1.7 | Qwen3-Max |
| MMMU | 80.7 | 78.7 | 2.0 | o4 Vision |
| Arena Elo | 1473.2 | 1449.2 | 24.0 | o4 Vision |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, o4 Vision costs about $35.27 per million tokens and Qwen3-Max costs about $36.60. o4 Vision is roughly 4% cheaper than Qwen3-Max. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Qwen3-Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for o4 Vision. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, o4 Vision wins 7, Qwen3-Max wins 5, and 0 are tied. On the index average, o4 Vision leads Qwen3-Max by 0.1 points (84.5 versus 84.4).
The price picture favours o4 Vision. The context picture favours Qwen3-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 o4 Vision for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose o4 Vision if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
Choose Qwen3-Max if
- You need the larger 400,000-token context window.
FAQ
Is o4 Vision better than Qwen3-Max?
On the index average, o4 Vision leads Qwen3-Max by 0.1 points (84.5 versus 84.4). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. o4 Vision wins 7 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max wins 5.
Which is cheaper, o4 Vision or Qwen3-Max?
o4 Vision is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $35.27 per million tokens, versus $36.60 for Qwen3-Max.
Which has the larger context window?
Qwen3-Max has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens. o4 Vision has 200,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
o4 Vision is proprietary; Qwen3-Max is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with o4 Vision for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.