Qwen3.8 Max vs Qwen3.8 27B vs Grok 4.6

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within 2 points (Qwen3.8 Max 69/100, Qwen3.8 27B 67/100, Grok 4.6 65/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: Grok 4.6 for raw capability, Qwen3.8 27B on price and Qwen3.8 Max for long inputs. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Qwen3.8 27B is cheaper at $0.40 input / $2.50 output per million tokens (median across 39 API providers). Qwen3.8 Max costs $2.00 input / $6.00 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price); Grok 4.6 costs $2.00 input / $6.00 output per million tokens (official xAI API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.925 per million tokens for Qwen3.8 27B versus $3.00 for Qwen3.8 Max (3.2× as much) and $3.00 for Grok 4.6 (3.2× as much).

Grok 4.6 scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Grok 4.6 156.6 (#19 of 148), Qwen3.8 Max 156.6 (#20 of 148) and Qwen3.8 27B 149.4 (#53 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (154.7–158.9 vs 154.5–158.8), so treat the gap as small.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Qwen3.8 Max, Qwen3.8 27B and Grok 4.6 yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Grok 4.6 leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

Qwen3.8 Max has the largest context window at 1,000,000 tokens, against 500,000 for Grok 4.6 and 262,144 for Qwen3.8 27B. Maximum output per response: Qwen3.8 Max up to 131,072, Qwen3.8 27B up to 32,768, Grok 4.6 up to 500,000 tokens.

Qwen3.8 Max accepts text, images, PDFs and video; Qwen3.8 27B accepts text, images and video; Grok 4.6 accepts text and images. Qwen3.8 Max handles the widest range of inputs.

Qwen3.8 27B publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; Qwen3.8 Max and Grok 4.6 is proprietary.

Qwen3.8 27B is the newest, released Aug 14, 2026. Grok 4.6 came out Aug 12, 2026; Qwen3.8 Max came out Aug 3, 2026. Knowledge cutoff: Grok 4.6 Feb 1, 2026.

Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Oct 4, 2026.