Compare / Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct vs Llama 4 Maverick

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct vs Llama 4 Maverick

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 18 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
Alibaba · profile
Llama 4 Maverick
Meta · profile
Results compared
18
Shared sources
3

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct or Llama 4 Maverick? The short answer

  • Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct is cheaper: $0.35 against $0.42 per million tokens, 16% less.
  • They score about the same on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (9.6 and 10.0).
  • Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct writes faster: 180 tokens a second against 42.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B InstructLlama 4 Maverick
Price per million tokens$0.10 in · $1.10 out$0.27 in · $0.85 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.35$0.42
Cheapest host, blended$0.27 (Alibaba)$0.30 (DigitalOcean)
Intelligence Index9.610.0
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second18042
Context window262,144 tokens1,048,576 tokens
WeightsOpenOpen
Developer based inChinathe US

Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.

Which is better for what

Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.

Use caseQwen3 Next 80B A3B InstructLlama 4 Maverick
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls not measured 141 of 161
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 140 of 195 146 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 104 of 187 166 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 117 of 153 not measured

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3 Next 80B A3B InstructLlama 4 Maverick
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4111,317
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,3131,307
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,3991,326
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,3761,314
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,3991,327
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,3421,312
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 9.6010.0
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 73.8%67.1%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 7.6%4.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 39.7%43.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 52.7%50.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedOutput speedtokens per second 18042.4
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 7.6%6.8%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTime to first answer tokenseconds 1.050.64
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 21.6%17.8%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 7.0%13.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.310.37
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 41.824.0

Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.

Quick answers

Is Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct better than Llama 4 Maverick?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct or Llama 4 Maverick?

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct costs $0.35 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $0.42 for Llama 4 Maverick.

Which is faster, Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct or Llama 4 Maverick?

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct writes about 180 tokens a second on its usual API, against 42 for Llama 4 Maverick (Artificial Analysis).

Run Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct and Llama 4 Maverick on your own prompt

Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.