Qwen: Qwen3 Max vs OpenAI: o3
Qwen: Qwen3 Max is cheaper than OpenAI: o3 by about 55% on a blended (75% input / 25% output) basis. Qwen: Qwen3 Max charges $0.780000 / $3.900000 per 1M input/output tokens; OpenAI: o3 charges $2.000000 / $8.000000.
| Field | Qwen: Qwen3 Max | OpenAI: o3 |
|---|---|---|
| Input $/Mtok | $0.780000 | $2.000000 |
| Output $/Mtok | $3.900000 | $8.000000 |
| Cache read $/Mtok | $0.156000 | $0.500000 |
| Cache write $/Mtok | $0.975000 | – |
| Input $/Mchar | 0.235202 | 0.563428 |
| Output $/Mchar | 1.176009 | 2.253712 |
| Context window | 262144 | 200000 |
| Tokenizer | qwen2 | o200k |
| Confidence? | api | api |
| Source | openrouter | openrouter |
Confidence: official = vendor pricing page · api = OpenRouter per-host · aggregator = community list, may lag · unreviewed = automatic extraction awaiting review. When sources disagree the most authoritative wins. Details: /methodology#confidence
Price history
Same workload, monthly cost
Illustrative monthly cost at 10M tokens/month, split per workload preset. Not a substitute for the calculator, which uses your own volume, cache and batch assumptions.
| Workload | Qwen: Qwen3 Max | OpenAI: o3 |
|---|---|---|
| Coding agent | $9.36 | $23.00 |
| RAG chat | $12.48 | $29.00 |
| Summarisation (batch) | $10.92 | $26.00 |
| Classification | $8.42 | $21.20 |
| Chat assistant | $20.28 | $44.00 |
| Content generation | $32.76 | $68.00 |
Cite this page
Qwen: Qwen3 Max vs OpenAI: o3: $0.780000/$3.900000 vs $2.000000/$8.000000 per 1M tokens as of 2026-10-04. Token Barometer by Dejan Strbad, https://tokenbarometer.com, data CC BY 4.0. https://tokenbarometer.com/compare/alibaba_qwen3-max-vs-openai_o3