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Qwen3 Max vs Qwen4-Max-Preview

Comparing Qwen3 Max and Qwen4-Max-Preview across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

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

Which is better?

Qwen3 Max 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 Qwen3 Max

  • you want predictable pricing at $0.50/M input and $5.00/M output

Choose Qwen4-Max-Preview

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

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Qwen3 Max
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.50 / M
— / M
Output price
$5.00 / M
— / M
Context window
256,000
—

Individual benchmarks

6 reported for Qwen3 Max · 0 for Qwen4-Max-Preview

No common benchmarks found

Qwen3 Max 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 Qwen3 Max specifies input context (256,000 tokens). Only Qwen3 Max specifies output context (131,072 tokens).

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 Max
Input256,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Sat Nov 14 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen4-Max-Preview supports multimodal inputs, whereas Qwen3 Max does not.

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

Qwen3 Max

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Both models are licensed under proprietary licenses.

Both models have usage restrictions defined by their respective organizations.

Qwen3 Max

Proprietary

Closed source

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Qwen3 Max was released on 2025-12-15, while Qwen4-Max-Preview was released on 2026-11-11.

Qwen4-Max-Preview is 11 months newer than Qwen3 Max.

Qwen3 Max

Dec 15, 2025

11 months ago

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Nov 11, 2026

1 days ago

11mo 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 Qwen3 Max and Qwen4-Max-Preview side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Qwen3 Max
✓ Preferred
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Qwen3 Max vs Qwen4-Max-Preview.

Which is better, Qwen3 Max or Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Qwen3 Max (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 Qwen3 Max compare to Qwen4-Max-Preview in benchmarks?

Qwen3 Max scores AIME 2025: 81.6%, t2-bench: 74.8%, SWE-Bench Verified: 69.6%, LiveCodeBench v6: 69.0%, SuperGPQA: 65.1%.

What are the context window sizes for Qwen3 Max and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Qwen3 Max supports 256K 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 Qwen3 Max and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

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

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