Compare/Qwen3 Max vs Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B

Qwen3 MaxvsLlama 3.1 Instruct 405B

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
Meta

Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B

Input
$2.75/M
Output
$6.5/M
Speed
38 tok/s
TTFT
0.67s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Qwen3 Max
Faster (tok/s)
Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B
Lower Latency
Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B
Benchmarks (11-1)
Qwen3 Max

Pricing Comparison

MetricQwen3 MaxLlama 3.1 Instruct 405B
Input ($/M tokens)$1.655$2.75
Output ($/M tokens)$7.225$6.5
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Qwen3 Max$2.38
Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B$3.40

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Qwen3 Max
33 tok/s
Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B
38 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Qwen3 Max
1.89s
Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B
0.67s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
31.417.4
Coding Index
26.414.5
Math Index
80.73.0
GPQA Diamond
76.4%51.5%
MMLU-Pro
84.1%73.2%
LiveCodeBench
76.7%30.5%
AIME 2025
80.7%3.0%
MATH-500
70.3%
Humanity's Last Exam
11.1%4.2%
SciCode
38.3%29.9%
IFBench
44.1%39.0%
TerminalBench
20.5%6.8%
Qwen3 Max11 wins
1 winsLlama 3.1 Instruct 405B

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 Max or Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B?

Qwen3 Max is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $3.05/M tokens vs $3.69/M for Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Qwen3 Max wins 11 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 1 for Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B generates tokens faster at 38 tok/s vs 33 tok/s. However, Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B has lower time-to-first-token (0.67s vs 1.89s).

When should I use Qwen3 Max vs Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B?

Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 Max for lower cost, Qwen3 Max for stronger benchmark performance, and Llama 3.1 Instruct 405B for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.