Qwen 3 Max vs O3 Mini

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

Qwen 3 Max

Qwen

Flagship Qwen 3 model. Top-tier reasoning and coding, competitive with Claude Opus and GPT-4.1.

Input$5.00/M
Output$20.00/M
Context256K tokens
Best ForComplex coding, advanced reasoning, bilingual enterprise applications

O3 Mini

OpenAI

OpenAI's reasoning model at lower cost. Strong at math, coding, and science tasks.

Input$1.10/M
Output$4.40/M
Context200K tokens
Best ForMath, science, coding tasks requiring deep reasoning
Benchmark80/100

Cost Comparison by Scenario

Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.

ScenarioQwen 3 MaxO3 MiniSavings
Small Script (1K lines) $0.78 $0.17 O3 Mini saves $0.60 (78%)
Medium Feature (10K lines) $5.75 $1.27 O3 Mini saves $4.48 (78%)
Large Project (50K lines) $28.75 $6.33 O3 Mini saves $22.42 (78%)
Code Review (5K lines) $1.38 $0.30 O3 Mini saves $1.07 (78%)

Verdict

O3 Mini wins on both price and performance — $1.10/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.

For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.

Compare with Other Models