Qwen3 Max vs Qwen3.5 Plus

Qwen3.5 Plus is the better all-round choice, scoring 66/100 against Qwen3 Max (50). It leads on capability, price, inputs & features and context window. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper at $0.40 input / $2.40 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price). Qwen3 Max costs $1.20 input / $6.00 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.90 per million tokens for Qwen3.5 Plus versus $2.40 for Qwen3 Max (2.7× as much).

Qwen3.5 Plus scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3.5 Plus 146.8 (#65 of 148) and Qwen3 Max 142.4 (#91 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (144.6–148.1 vs 140.0–144.6), so treat the gap as small. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — Qwen3.5 Plus 84.9%, Qwen3 Max 72.6%; OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025 — Qwen3.5 Plus 86.7%, Qwen3 Max 73.3%; SimpleQA Verified — Qwen3 Max 48.8%, Qwen3.5 Plus 25.4%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Qwen3 Max and Qwen3.5 Plus yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen3.5 Plus leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. Both support tool calling for agent workflows.

Qwen3.5 Plus has the largest context window at 1,000,000 tokens, against 262,144 for Qwen3 Max. Maximum output per response: Qwen3 Max up to 65,536, Qwen3.5 Plus up to 65,536 tokens.

Qwen3 Max accepts text; Qwen3.5 Plus accepts text, images and video. Qwen3.5 Plus handles the widest range of inputs.

No. Qwen3 Max and Qwen3.5 Plus are proprietary and only available through APIs and apps.

Qwen3.5 Plus is the newest, released Feb 16, 2026. Qwen3 Max came out Sep 23, 2025. Knowledge cutoff: Qwen3 Max Apr 2025, Qwen3.5 Plus Apr 2025.

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.