Compare/Qwen3 Max vs GPT-4.1

Qwen3 MaxvsGPT-4.1

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

Alibaba

Qwen3 Max

Input
$1.655/M
Output
$7.225/M
Speed
33 tok/s
TTFT
1.89s
OpenAI

GPT-4.1

Input
$2/M
Output
$8/M
Speed
102 tok/s
TTFT
0.64s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Qwen3 Max
Faster (tok/s)
GPT-4.1
Lower Latency
GPT-4.1
Benchmarks (11-1)
Qwen3 Max

Pricing Comparison

MetricQwen3 MaxGPT-4.1
Input ($/M tokens)$1.655$2
Output ($/M tokens)$7.225$8
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Qwen3 Max$2.38
GPT-4.1$2.80

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Qwen3 Max
33 tok/s
GPT-4.1
102 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Qwen3 Max
1.89s
GPT-4.1
0.64s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
31.426.3
Coding Index
26.421.8
Math Index
80.734.7
GPQA Diamond
76.4%66.6%
MMLU-Pro
84.1%80.6%
LiveCodeBench
76.7%45.7%
AIME 2025
80.7%34.7%
MATH-500
91.3%
Humanity's Last Exam
11.1%4.6%
SciCode
38.3%38.1%
IFBench
44.1%43.0%
TerminalBench
20.5%13.6%
Qwen3 Max11 wins
1 winsGPT-4.1

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 Max or GPT-4.1?

Qwen3 Max is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $3.05/M tokens vs $3.50/M for GPT-4.1.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Qwen3 Max wins 11 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 1 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 102 tok/s vs 33 tok/s. However, GPT-4.1 has lower time-to-first-token (0.64s vs 1.89s).

When should I use Qwen3 Max vs GPT-4.1?

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