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Qwen2 72B Instruct vs Qwen4-Max-Preview

Comparing Qwen2 72B Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Preview across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

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

Which is better?

Qwen2 72B Instruct 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 Qwen2 72B Instruct

  • 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.

Qwen2 72B Instruct
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
— / M
— / M
Output price
— / M
— / M
Context window
—
—

Individual benchmarks

17 reported for Qwen2 72B Instruct · 0 for Qwen4-Max-Preview

No common benchmarks found

Qwen2 72B Instruct 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

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen4-Max-Preview supports multimodal inputs, whereas Qwen2 72B Instruct does not.

Qwen4-Max-Preview can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Qwen2 72B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Qwen2 72B Instruct is licensed under tongyi-qianwen, while Qwen4-Max-Preview uses a proprietary license.

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

Qwen2 72B Instruct

tongyi-qianwen

Open weights

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Qwen2 72B Instruct was released on 2024-07-23, while Qwen4-Max-Preview was released on 2026-11-11.

Qwen4-Max-Preview is 28 months newer than Qwen2 72B Instruct.

Qwen2 72B Instruct

Jul 23, 2024

2.3 years ago

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Nov 11, 2026

1 days ago

2.3yr 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 Qwen2 72B Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Preview side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Qwen2 72B Instruct
✓ Preferred
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Qwen2 72B Instruct vs Qwen4-Max-Preview.

Which is better, Qwen2 72B Instruct or Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Qwen2 72B Instruct (Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team) 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 Qwen2 72B Instruct compare to Qwen4-Max-Preview in benchmarks?

Qwen2 72B Instruct scores GSM8k: 91.1%, CMMLU: 90.1%, HellaSwag: 87.6%, HumanEval: 86.0%, Winogrande: 85.1%.

What are the main differences between Qwen2 72B Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Key differences include multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (tongyi-qianwen vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

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