Grok 4.6 vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Comparing Grok 4.6 and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
xAI · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Grok 4.6 and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.
On price, Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is roughly 6.2x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.
Grok 4.6 also accepts a larger context window (500,000 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.
Based on current benchmark, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose Grok 4.6
- you process long inputs — it offers a 500,000 token context window
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Aug 2026
Choose Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
- cost matters — it's about 6.2x cheaper per token
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Performance Benchmarks
Comparative analysis across standard metrics
Grok 4.6 and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinkingdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.
Arena Performance
Playground indexes and blind preference scores
Pricing Analysis
Price comparison per million tokens
For input processing, Grok 4.6 ($2.00/1M tokens) is 13.3x more expensive than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking ($0.15/1M tokens).
For output processing, Grok 4.6 ($6.00/1M tokens) is 4.0x more expensive than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking ($1.50/1M tokens).
In conclusion, Grok 4.6 is more expensive than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Grok 4.6 accepts 500,000 input tokens compared to Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking's 65,536 tokens. Only Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking specifies output context (65,536 tokens).
Input Capabilities
Supported data types and modalities
Grok 4.6 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking does not.
Grok 4.6 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Grok 4.6
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
License
Usage and distribution terms
Grok 4.6 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking uses Apache 2.0.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Proprietary
Closed source
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Grok 4.6 was released on 2026-08-12, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking was released on 2025-09-10.
Grok 4.6 is 11 months newer than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.
Aug 12, 2026
1 weeks ago
11mo newerSep 10, 2025
11 months ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Grok 4.6 has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2026-02-01, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking's cutoff date is not specified.
We can confirm Grok 4.6's training data extends to 2026-02-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking's cutoff date.
Feb 2026
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Provider Availability
Grok 4.6 is available from xAI. Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is available from Novita.
Grok 4.6
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Grok 4.6 and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Grok 4.6 vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.