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Pixtral-12B vs Qwen4-Max-Preview

Comparing Pixtral-12B and Qwen4-Max-Preview across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

Mistral AI · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Pixtral-12B and Qwen4-Max-Preview trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Pixtral-12B

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

Choose Qwen4-Max-Preview

  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Nov 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Pixtral-12B
Mistral AI
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.15 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.15 / M
— / M
Context window
128,000
—

Individual benchmarks

12 reported for Pixtral-12B · 0 for Qwen4-Max-Preview

No common benchmarks found

Pixtral-12B and Qwen4-Max-Previewdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Pixtral-12B specifies input context (128,000 tokens). Only Pixtral-12B specifies output context (8,192 tokens).

Mistral AI
Pixtral-12B
Input128,000 tokens
Output8,192 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Thu Nov 12 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Both Pixtral-12B and Qwen4-Max-Preview support multimodal inputs.

They are both capable of processing various types of data, offering versatility in application.

Pixtral-12B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Pixtral-12B is licensed under Apache 2.0, while Qwen4-Max-Preview uses a proprietary license.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Pixtral-12B

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Pixtral-12B was released on 2024-09-17, while Qwen4-Max-Preview was released on 2026-11-11.

Qwen4-Max-Preview is 26 months newer than Pixtral-12B.

Pixtral-12B

Sep 17, 2024

2.2 years ago

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Nov 11, 2026

1 days ago

2.2yr newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Pixtral-12B and Qwen4-Max-Preview side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Pixtral-12B
✓ Preferred
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Pixtral-12B vs Qwen4-Max-Preview.

Which is better, Pixtral-12B or Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Pixtral-12B (Mistral AI) and Qwen4-Max-Preview (Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team) each have strengths in different areas. Compare their benchmark scores, pricing, context windows, and capabilities above to determine which fits your needs.

How does Pixtral-12B compare to Qwen4-Max-Preview in benchmarks?

Pixtral-12B scores DocVQA: 90.7%, ChartQA: 81.8%, VQAv2: 78.6%, MT-Bench: 76.8%, HumanEval: 72.0%.

What are the context window sizes for Pixtral-12B and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Pixtral-12B supports 128K tokens and Qwen4-Max-Preview supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Pixtral-12B and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Key differences include licensing (Apache 2.0 vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Pixtral-12B and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Pixtral-12B is developed by Mistral AI and Qwen4-Max-Preview is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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