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Qwen 3 Max vs Claude 4.6 Sonnet

Side-by-side pricing, capabilities, real-world cost across common scenarios, and our editorial pick.

Add a modelUp to 4 models can be compared
all prices in USD per 1M tokens
OVERALL WINNER

Qwen 3 Max

Alibaba · released 2026-03-01

Quality (AA Index)84
Input price$0.80
Output price$3.20
Context256K
Throughput130 tok/s
P50 latency0.9s
View full pricing

Claude 4.6 Sonnet

Anthropic · released 2026-04-08

Quality (AA Index)89
Input price$3.00
Output price$15.00
Context200K
Throughput85 tok/s
P50 latency1.1s
View full pricing
Try Qwen 3 Max on OpenRouterTry Claude 4.6 Sonnet on OpenRouter

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Head-to-head specs

Green column = winner per metric
MetricQwen 3 MaxClaude 4.6 SonnetVerdict
Input price
/1M tokens
$0.80$3.00Qwen 3 Max −73%
Output price
/1M tokens
$3.20$15.00Qwen 3 Max −79%
Context window
max input length
256K200KQwen 3 Max +1.3×
AA Quality
AA Intelligence Index (0–100)
8489Claude 4.6 Sonnet +5pt
Arena Elo
LMArena human-pref Elo (800–2000)
——Tied
Throughput
tokens per second
13085Qwen 3 Max +53%
P50 latency
first token
0.9s1.1sQwen 3 Max −18%
Vision
multimodal
Tied
Function calling
tool use
Tied
Reasoning mode
chain-of-thought
—

Monthly cost across common scenarios

Default usage assumptions
ScenarioQwen 3 MaxClaude 4.6 Sonnet
customer support
1000K req · 600/180 tok
$1.1K$4.5K
chat with docs
300K req · 4000/300 tok
$1.2K$5.0K
code generation
500K req · 2000/500 tok
$1.6K$6.8K
voice assistant
600K req · 800/200 tok
$768$3.2K
Our pick

For most workloads, choose Qwen 3 Max.

  • 73% cheaper input price, which compounds at scale
  • 1.3× the context window — better for long documents and agents
  • 53% faster throughput — matters for streaming UX and voice agents
Choose Claude 4.6 Sonnet instead if: Strongest non-OpenAI option for nuanced writing and code review; pricier than DeepSeek but more reliable refusal patterns for regulated industries.

Read our deep analysis

Why pick? Use both with smart routing

Phase 2 · gateway with fallback chain

Set Qwen 3 Max as primary, Claude 4.6 Sonnet as fallback. One key, one bill, automatic failover when Qwen 3 Max errors.

PHASE 2 PREVIEW · gateway not live yetThis endpoint does not exist yet. The gateway is in Phase 2 — what you see below is a design preview of the planned interface, not a live API. We will email subscribers when it launches.
Preview the planned API call
$ curl https://api.aipricly.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIPC_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "routing": {
      "primary": "alibaba/qwen-3-max",
      "fallback": ["anthropic/claude-4-6-sonnet"]
    },
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "..."}]
  }'

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