Qwen3-235B-A22B vs Qwen3-Max
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Alibaba (Qwen) · Jul 2025
The most popular open general-purpose Qwen: 235B MoE with hybrid thinking, a staple of the 2025 open-source ecosystem.
Alibaba (Qwen) · Sep 2025
Alibaba's trillion-parameter API flagship — frontier-adjacent quality with strong agentic tool use at mid-tier prices.
The verdict
Qwen3-Max wins 2 of the 3 benchmarks these models share, against 1 for Qwen3-235B-A22B. On price the gap is dramatic: Qwen3-235B-A22B works out roughly 6.2x cheaper per blended million tokens. And Qwen3-235B-A22B is open-weights (Apache 2.0), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Benchmark head-to-head 1–2
Specs & pricing
| Qwen3-235B-A22B | Qwen3-Max | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | 69.0 | 80.5 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.22 | $1.2 |
| Output price / 1M | $0.88 | $6 |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 33K | 66K |
| Open weights | yes (Apache 2.0) | no |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Apr 2025 | Jun 2025 |
| Released | Jul 2025 | Sep 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $3.52 | $21.00 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Qwen3-235B-A22B or Qwen3-Max?
- Qwen3-Max wins 2 of the 3 benchmarks these models share, against 1 for Qwen3-235B-A22B. On price the gap is dramatic: Qwen3-235B-A22B works out roughly 6.2x cheaper per blended million tokens. And Qwen3-235B-A22B is open-weights (Apache 2.0), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, Qwen3-235B-A22B or Qwen3-Max?
- Qwen3-235B-A22B costs $0.22/$0.88 per million input/output tokens, while Qwen3-Max costs $1.2/$6. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $3.52 versus $21.00.
- Which model is better for coding, Qwen3-235B-A22B or Qwen3-Max?
- We don't yet track SWE-bench Verified results for both models; check their individual pages for coding-related scores.