Noometry

Model comparison

Qwen Max vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.

Qwen Max Alibaba (Qwen)

34.7

Rank #230 Confirmed

Qwen3-30B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

38.9

Rank #179 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen Max scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 6 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 37.4 to 22.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.1% for Qwen Max and 70.3% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
  • Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.60 / $6.40 for Qwen Max.
  • Qwen3-30B-A3B accepts more context: 41K tokens versus 33K.
  • Qwen3-30B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Qwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
ProviderAlibaba (Qwen)Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index34.738.9
Released2024-04-032025-04-28
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window33K41K
Max output8K16K
Input $ / M tokens$1.60$0.12
Output $ / M tokens$6.40$0.50
Results tracked2332

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Coding12881416
Aider Polyglot21.8%—
SciCode—33.3%
WeirdML—29.8%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Qwen Max: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—41.4%

Reasoning Qwen Max leads

Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Hard Prompts12691398
Kagi LLM Benchmark—54.9%
CritPt—0.3%
Chess Puzzles—8%
DTBench—69.3%
LMCA—22.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index—139.63

Math Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202516.1%70.3%
LMArena Math12751394
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—47.8%
MATH Level 567.2%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)1%—

Knowledge Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
GPQA Diamond56.1%70.1%
LMArena Expert12481396
Confabulations—12.3%

Multilingual Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Non-English12631372
LMArena Chinese12541433
LMArena French13301418
LMArena German12541380
LMArena Japanese12051337
LMArena Korean11421331
LMArena Russian12741370
LMArena Spanish12901404

Instruction Following Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following12621363

Long Context Qwen Max leads

Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
Fiction.LiveBench66.7%40.6%
LMArena Longer Query12881379

Writing & Preference Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Text12821384
LMArena Creative Writing12481317
LMArena Multi-Turn12771378
Short-Story Creative Writing—75.3%

Frequently asked questions

Is Qwen Max better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Qwen Max or Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Qwen Max lists at $1.60 and $6.40.

Is Qwen Max or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?

Qwen3-30B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.5 versus 30.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3-30B-A3B does, with 41K tokens against 33K.

How many benchmarks do Qwen Max and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen Max has 23 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.

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