Price Per TokenPrice Per Token
Qwen
Qwen
vs
Qwen
Qwen

Qwen3 Max vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct

A detailed comparison of pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities

Sponsor Price Per Token Reach 5000+ developers comparing LLM APIs

125 out of our 298 tracked models have had a price change in January.

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Key Takeaways

Qwen3 Max wins:

  • Larger context window
  • Higher intelligence benchmark
  • Better at coding
  • Better at math

Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct wins:

  • Cheaper input tokens
  • Cheaper output tokens
  • Faster response time
  • Supports vision
Price Advantage
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Benchmark Advantage
Qwen3 Max
Context Window
Qwen3 Max
Speed
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct

Pricing Comparison

Price Comparison

MetricQwen3 MaxQwen3 VL 8B InstructWinner
Input (per 1M tokens)$1.20$0.08 Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Output (per 1M tokens)$6.00$0.50 Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Cache Read (per 1M)$240000.00N/A Qwen3 Max
Using a 3:1 input/output ratio, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct is 92% cheaper overall.

Qwen3 Max Providers

Alibaba $1.20 (Cheapest)

Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct Providers

Novita $0.08 (Cheapest)
Together $0.18
Alibaba $0.18
Parasail $0.25

Benchmark Comparison

6
Benchmarks Compared
6
Qwen3 Max Wins
0
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct Wins

Benchmark Scores

BenchmarkQwen3 MaxQwen3 VL 8B InstructWinner
Intelligence Index
Overall intelligence score
31.214.7
Coding Index
Code generation & understanding
26.47.3
Math Index
Mathematical reasoning
80.727.3
MMLU Pro
Academic knowledge
84.168.6
GPQA
Graduate-level science
76.442.7
LiveCodeBench
Competitive programming
76.733.2
Qwen3 Max significantly outperforms in coding benchmarks.

Cost vs Quality

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Qwen3 Max
Other models

Context & Performance

Context Window

Qwen3 Max
256,000
tokens
Max output: 32,768 tokens
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
131,072
tokens
Max output: 32,768 tokens
Qwen3 Max has a 49% larger context window.

Speed Performance

MetricQwen3 MaxQwen3 VL 8B InstructWinner
Tokens/second32.9 tok/s97.7 tok/s
Time to First Token2.06s0.90s
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct responds 197% faster on average.

Capabilities

Feature Comparison

FeatureQwen3 MaxQwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Vision (Image Input)
Tool/Function Calls
Reasoning Mode
Audio Input
Audio Output
PDF Input
Prompt Caching
Web Search

License & Release

PropertyQwen3 MaxQwen3 VL 8B Instruct
LicenseOpen SourceOpen Source
AuthorQwenQwen
ReleasedSep 2025Oct 2025

Qwen3 Max Modalities

Input
text
Output
text

Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct Modalities

Input
imagetext
Output
text

Related Comparisons

Compare Qwen3 Max with:

Compare Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct with:

Frequently Asked Questions

Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has cheaper input pricing at $0.08/M tokens. Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has cheaper output pricing at $0.50/M tokens.
Qwen3 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks with a score of 26.4, compared to Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct's score of 7.3.
Qwen3 Max has a 256,000 token context window, while Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has a 131,072 token context window.
Qwen3 Max does not support vision. Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct supports vision.