Qwen3-Max vs Qwen3-Max Turbo: which model should you choose?
We compared Qwen3-Max 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.
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
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 | Qwen3-Max | Qwen3-Max Turbo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $17.37 | $17.70 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $94.30 | $63.95 | B |
| Context window | 400,000 | 1,000,000 | B |
| Max output | 4,096 | 128,000 | B |
| Average score | 84.4 | 84.7 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1449.2 | 1456.9 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Qwen3-Max wins 4, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 8, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Qwen3-Max | Qwen3-Max Turbo | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.0 | 86.8 | 2.8 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| GPQA Diamond | 82.3 | 78.3 | 4.0 | Qwen3-Max |
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.3 | 75.9 | 2.6 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| HumanEval | 88.5 | 92.5 | 4.0 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 89.7 | 91.9 | 2.2 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| AIME 2025 | 81.1 | 81.2 | 0.1 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 82.2 | 76.8 | 5.4 | Qwen3-Max |
| IFEval | 92.5 | 92.1 | 0.4 | Qwen3-Max |
| TruthfulQA | 83.4 | 86.3 | 2.9 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 92.9 | 90.8 | 2.1 | Qwen3-Max |
| MMMU | 78.7 | 78.8 | 0.1 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
| Arena Elo | 1449.2 | 1456.9 | 7.7 | Qwen3-Max Turbo |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Qwen3-Max costs about $36.60 per million tokens and Qwen3-Max Turbo costs about $29.26. Qwen3-Max Turbo is roughly 20% 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 Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 400,000 for Qwen3-Max. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Qwen3-Max wins 4, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 8, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Qwen3-Max Turbo leads Qwen3-Max by 0.3 points (84.7 versus 84.4).
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 Qwen3-Max if
- You prefer Alibaba Cloud'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 Qwen3-Max better than Qwen3-Max Turbo?
On the index average, Qwen3-Max Turbo leads Qwen3-Max by 0.3 points (84.7 versus 84.4). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Qwen3-Max wins 4 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 8.
Which is cheaper, Qwen3-Max or Qwen3-Max Turbo?
Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $29.26 per million tokens, versus $36.60 for Qwen3-Max.
Which has the larger context window?
Qwen3-Max Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Qwen3-Max has 400,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Qwen3-Max 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.