Model comparison
Qwen Max vs Qwen3 8B
Qwen Max and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (34.7 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen Max scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3 8B in 3 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 8B leads 34.9 to 22.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.1% for Qwen Max and 56.1% for Qwen3 8B.
- Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $1.60 / $6.40 for Qwen Max.
- Qwen3 8B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 33K.
- Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 34.7 | 33.7 |
| Released | 2024-04-03 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 33K | 131K |
| Max output | 8K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.60 | $0.18 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $6.40 | $0.70 |
| Results tracked | 23 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3 8B leads
Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292), Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 21.8% | — |
| SciCode | — | 22.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1288 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Qwen Max: —, Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |
Reasoning Qwen Max leads
Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151), Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1269 | — |
| DTBench | — | 59.7% |
| LMCA | — | 8.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 136.17 |
Math Qwen3 8B leads
Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276), Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.1% | 56.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1275 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 67.2% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 1% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3 8B leads
Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 56.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1263 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1254 | — |
| LMArena French | 1330 | — |
| LMArena German | 1254 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1205 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1142 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1274 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1290 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1262 | — |
Long Context Qwen Max leads
Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180), Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1288 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1282 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1248 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1277 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Qwen Max better than Qwen3 8B?
Qwen Max and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (34.7 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Qwen Max or Qwen3 8B?
Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Qwen Max lists at $1.60 and $6.40.
Is Qwen Max or Qwen3 8B better for coding?
Qwen3 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 34.0 versus 30.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3 8B does, with 131K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Qwen Max and Qwen3 8B share?
3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen Max has 23 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.