Noometry

Model comparison

Qwen3 8B vs Qwen3 Max

Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 7.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 7 shared benchmarks.

Qwen3 8B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.3

Rank #237 Confirmed

Qwen3 Max Alibaba (Qwen)

43.5

Rank #82 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen3 8B scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 Max in 5 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3 Max leads 48.1 to 36.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is DTBench: 59.7% for Qwen3 8B and 82.1% for Qwen3 Max.
  • Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $1.20 / $6 for Qwen3 Max.
  • Qwen3 Max accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Qwen3 8BQwen3 Max
ProviderAlibaba (Qwen)Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index33.343.5
Released2025-042025-09-23
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window131K262K
Max output8K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.18$1.20
Output $ / M tokens$0.70$6
Results tracked1133

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3 Max leads

Qwen3 8B: 33.4 (#245), Qwen3 Max: 42.4 (#93)

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
SciCode22.6%—
LMArena Coding—1456
ALE-Bench—370.45

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Qwen3 8B: 29.9 (#71), Qwen3 Max: —

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard42.6%—
Vending-Bench 2—71.56

Reasoning Qwen3 Max leads

Qwen3 8B: 16.1 (#299), Qwen3 Max: 22.0 (#186)

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
Chess Puzzles5%4%
DTBench59.7%82.1%
LMCA8.8%28.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index136.17142.41
Kagi LLM Benchmark—72.5%
NYT Connections (extended)—30.1%
CritPt0%—
LMArena Hard Prompts—1448
Mystery Game Puzzles—5%

Math Qwen3 Max leads

Qwen3 8B: 33.3 (#176), Qwen3 Max: 37.6 (#94)

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202556.1%73.3%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—18.9%
LMArena Math—1447
MATH Level 5—97.1%

Knowledge Qwen3 Max leads

Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#164), Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#72)

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
GPQA Diamond56.8%72.6%
SimpleQA Verified—48.7%
Vectara Hallucination Rate4.8%—
LMArena Expert—1457

Multilingual Not comparable

Qwen3 8B: —, Qwen3 Max: 53.9 (#58)

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
LMArena Non-English—1429
LMArena Chinese—1479
LMArena French—1450
LMArena German—1463
LMArena Japanese—1399
LMArena Korean—1397
LMArena Russian—1428
LMArena Spanish—1463

Instruction Following Not comparable

Qwen3 8B: —, Qwen3 Max: 75.0 (#81)

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
LMArena Instruction Following—1420

Long Context Qwen3 Max leads

Qwen3 8B: 37.8 (#205), Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#129)

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
Fiction.LiveBench62.1%66.7%
CL-bench—14.5%
LMArena Longer Query—1439

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Qwen3 8B: —, Qwen3 Max: 62.6 (#72)

BenchmarkQwen3 8BQwen3 Max
LMArena Text—1439
LMArena Creative Writing—1401
LMArena Multi-Turn—1446

Frequently asked questions

Is Qwen3 8B better than Qwen3 Max?

Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 7.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 8B or Qwen3 Max?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Qwen3 Max lists at $1.20 and $6.

Is Qwen3 8B or Qwen3 Max better for coding?

Qwen3 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 33.4 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3 Max does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Qwen3 8B and Qwen3 Max share?

7 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen3 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.

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