Models / Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview

Alibaba

Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview

Early evidence, 7 results from 1 source, on 1 use case. Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview trails most of the field on what it has been measured on; it is not on sale through OpenRouter, so it is here for reference.

Superseded. Qwen3-Max-Thinking is Alibaba's newer model in this line, at $1.56 blended: see Qwen3-Max-Thinking.

Compared with the models available today (it is not on sale itself), mid-field on reasoning and knowledge, the one use case measured.

Results as of 8 October 2026, from 7 results on 1 source; prices checked 8 Oct 2026.

Price per million tokens
Not available through OpenRouter
Speed
No speed yet
Artificial Analysis lists it but has not published a speed for it yet
Intelligence Index
16.3
Artificial Analysis
Spring Prompt overall
Not ranked yet
needs our benchmarks and two groups of results
Developer
Alibaba, based in China
Weights not published
Released
3 Nov 2025 (Artificial Analysis)

Where it stands among the models you could choose

Ranked only among models available today (those you can call through OpenRouter), in the groups people choose between: the same price band, similar intelligence, the same speed, developers based in the same place. Retired models are left out.

AmongIntelligence IndexSpring Prompt overallPrice, blendedSpeed
Models available today 108th of 199Claude Opus 5.5 – – –
Models from developers based in China 49th of 87MiMo-V2.6-Pro – – –

The name under each rank is the leader of that group; green is the top quarter of the group and red the bottom quarter, by rank. Price is shown as a percentile: the share of the group that costs less, so lower is cheaper. "Sets this group" marks the measure the group is defined by. Spring Prompt overall is our score out of 100 across every source (how it works). Price is the developer's list price (or the typical OpenRouter host where we haven't read one) for three input tokens to one output; intelligence and speed are from Artificial Analysis (data sourced from Artificial Analysis); "similar intelligence" means within 4 points on its Intelligence Index. Developer locations are where each company is based, not where a model is served. Groups under 3 models are not ranked.

How good is it, and for what?

Each use case ranks the available models its benchmarks measured. The bar shows its percentile in that field, best to the right. Open a row for the results behind it.

Product listingsTurning a sparse product feed and photos into listings that can go live Not measured
  • CatalogBench: has not measured this model.
Decks from an analysisTurning a finished analysis into a deck you could present as it is Not measured
  • DeckBench: has not measured this model.
User surveysPlanning a user survey and reading its results without being misled Not measured
  • SurveyBench: has not measured this model.
Marketing planningPlanning a year of ad spend without overspending Not measured
  • ROASBench: has not measured this model.
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls Not measured
  • tau2-bench: has not measured this model.
  • Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4: has not measured this model.
  • OpenHands Index: has not measured this model.
  • Microsoft STATE-Bench: has not measured this model.
  • Artificial Analysis: has not measured this model.
  • Vending-Bench 2: has not measured this model.
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects Not measured
  • APEX-Agents: has not measured this model.
  • GDP.pdf: has not measured this model.
  • Remote Labor Index: has not measured this model.
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 114th of 199 available
BenchmarkQwen3-Max-Thinking-PreviewRank among availableBest available
Artificial AnalysisArtificial Analysis: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · reported 16.3 108th of 199 Claude Opus 5.5 57.6
Artificial AnalysisArtificial Analysis: Humanity's Last Exam · reported 12.7% 118th of 198 Claude Opus 5.5 61.4%
Artificial AnalysisArtificial Analysis: GPQA Diamond · reported 77.6% 109th of 188 GPT-6 Astra 96.3%
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality Not measured
  • Arena (formerly LMArena): has not measured this model.
  • UGI Leaderboard: has not measured this model.
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers Not measured
  • Vectara Hallucination Leaderboard: has not measured this model.
  • Arena (formerly LMArena): has not measured this model.
  • SimpleQA Verified (Epoch AI): has not measured this model.
Speed under pressureGood decisions against a real clock (fast chess) Not measured
  • BulletBench: has not measured this model.

Nearest alternatives

  • Alibaba's newer model in this lineQwen3-Max-Thinking$1.56 blended · Intelligence Index 21.3
  • Open weights at similar intelligenceQwen3.5-9B$0.11 blended · Intelligence Index 13.3

Against Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview, Intelligence Index 16.3. "Similar intelligence" means within 4 points or better.

Against the alternatives

The models you would most likely weigh it against: the leaders of the groups above.

Scroll sideways to see every alternative.

Qwen3-Max-Thinking-PreviewClaude Opus 5.5
most intelligent available today
MiMo-V2.6-Pro
most intelligent from China
Qwen3.8-Max (0902)
Alibaba's best other model
GPT-6.1 Sol
near the top overall
Price per million tokens – $8.00$0.54$3.00$4.00
Tokens a second – 97393755
Intelligence Index 16.3 57.646.345.451.8
Spring Prompt overall – 85–4881
Rank among available models, by use case
Product listings – 6th–17th2nd
Decks from an analysis – 5th–11th3rd
User surveys – 2nd––1st
Marketing planning – 5th–14th–
Agents and tool use – 2nd15th7th3rd
Professional work – 3rd–18th9th
Reasoning and knowledge 114th of 199 1st10th17th5th
Writing – 4th20th16th15th
Sticking to the facts – 2nd8th38th18th
Speed under pressure – ––––

Shaded figures are better than Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview's. A dash means no result.

Where it has been measured

Every result

7 published results from 1 source, each in the source's own units, with the configuration that produced it.

Artificial Analysis · reported by Artificial Analysis · 7 results
MeasureValueRankConfigurationDated
Artificial Analysis: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better 16.3 237 of 407 Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview 8 Oct 2026
Artificial Analysis: GPQA Diamond% of questions, higher is better 77.6% 194 of 359 Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview 8 Oct 2026
Artificial Analysis: Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better 12.7% 239 of 405 Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview 8 Oct 2026
Artificial Analysis: IFBench% of instructions, higher is better 53.8% 125 of 288 Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview 8 Oct 2026
Artificial Analysis: Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better 62.0% 234 of 393 Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview 8 Oct 2026
Artificial Analysis: Terminal-Bench Hard% of tasks, higher is better 17.4% 161 of 282 Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview 8 Oct 2026
Artificial Analysis: τ²-bench telecom% of tasks, higher is better 83.6% 91 of 286 Qwen3-Max-Thinking-Preview 8 Oct 2026

Not shown: Not business work, and a blend: read the parts for any one task.