Compare/Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs GPT-4.1

Qwen3.6 Max PreviewvsGPT-4.1

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Alibaba

Qwen3.6 Max Preview

Input
$1.3/M
Output
$7.8/M
Speed
37 tok/s
TTFT
2.89s
OpenAI

GPT-4.1

Input
$2/M
Output
$8/M
Speed
98 tok/s
TTFT
0.60s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Faster (tok/s)
GPT-4.1
Lower Latency
GPT-4.1
Benchmarks (7-5)
Qwen3.6 Max Preview

Pricing Comparison

MetricQwen3.6 Max PreviewGPT-4.1
Input ($/M tokens)$1.3$2
Output ($/M tokens)$7.8$8
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Qwen3.6 Max Preview$2.08
GPT-4.1$2.80

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Qwen3.6 Max Preview
37 tok/s
GPT-4.1
98 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Qwen3.6 Max Preview
2.89s
GPT-4.1
0.60s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
51.826.3
Coding Index
44.921.8
Math Index
34.7
GPQA Diamond
88.8%66.6%
MMLU-Pro
80.6%
LiveCodeBench
45.7%
AIME 2025
34.7%
MATH-500
91.3%
Humanity's Last Exam
28.9%4.6%
SciCode
46.9%38.1%
IFBench
76.6%43.0%
TerminalBench
43.9%13.6%
Qwen3.6 Max Preview7 wins
5 winsGPT-4.1

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.6 Max Preview or GPT-4.1?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $2.92/M tokens vs $3.50/M for GPT-4.1.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview wins 7 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 5 for GPT-4.1. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

GPT-4.1 generates tokens faster at 98 tok/s vs 37 tok/s. However, GPT-4.1 has lower time-to-first-token (0.60s vs 2.89s).

When should I use Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs GPT-4.1?

Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3.6 Max Preview for lower cost, Qwen3.6 Max Preview for stronger benchmark performance, and GPT-4.1 for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.