Qwen3 Max Thinking
About this model
Qwen3 Max Thinking is an AI model from Alibaba Qwen, made available through the API on February 9, 2026. It can read up to 262,144 tokens in one request, roughly 492 pages of text, and write up to 65,536 tokens in a single answer.
Through the API it costs $0.78 per million input tokens and $3.90 per million output tokens. Its pricing sits in the middle of the market.
It supports extended reasoning: it can "think" step by step before answering, which helps on maths, code and complex questions. It can call tools and functions, so developers can connect it to search, databases or other software.
Quality scores
Rankings →Not rated yet. Independent test results usually appear a few weeks after a model is released.
Where to use it
Companies that serve this model through an API: 1. Prices per million tokens, cheapest first.
Availability and prices come from OpenRouter’s public API and are refreshed daily. Uptime is the share of successful requests over the last 24 hours. Some providers run a compressed version of open models (fp8, int4), which is cheaper but can be slightly less accurate.
Use it in your code
Call Qwen3 Max Thinking through OpenRouter’s OpenAI-compatible API: create a key on openrouter.ai, then run one of these examples.
curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model": "qwen/qwen3-max-thinking", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello! What can you do?"}]}'import os
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1", api_key=os.environ["OPENROUTER_API_KEY"])
reply = client.chat.completions.create(
model="qwen/qwen3-max-thinking",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello! What can you do?"}],
)
print(reply.choices[0].message.content)import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI({ baseURL: "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1", apiKey: process.env.OPENROUTER_API_KEY });
const reply = await client.chat.completions.create({
model: "qwen/qwen3-max-thinking",
messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello! What can you do?" }],
});
console.log(reply.choices[0].message.content);The same code works with every model on this site: only the model ID changes. Many labs also offer their own API and SDK.
What it costs in practice
- 1,000 chat replies$1.56
- Summarise a 100-page document$0.043
- An app with 10,000 requests a day for a month$702
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News about Alibaba Qwen
See all →Frequently asked questions
- How much does Qwen3 Max Thinking cost?
- Qwen3 Max Thinking costs $0.78 per million input tokens and $3.90 per million output tokens through the API. For example, 1,000 chat replies of about 500 tokens in and 300 out cost around $1.56.
- What is the context window of Qwen3 Max Thinking?
- Qwen3 Max Thinking can read up to 262,144 tokens in one request, about 492 pages of text. It can write up to 65,536 tokens in a single answer.
- Is Qwen3 Max Thinking open source?
- No. Qwen3 Max Thinking is a closed model: its weights are not published, so you use it through Alibaba Qwen’s own apps and API, or through cloud providers.
- Who makes Qwen3 Max Thinking?
- Qwen3 Max Thinking is made by Alibaba Qwen. It became available through the API on February 9, 2026.
- Can Qwen3 Max Thinking read images?
- No. Qwen3 Max Thinking only accepts text as input.
- What are the alternatives to Qwen3 Max Thinking?
- Models with a similar price from other companies include Aion-2.0, Gemini 3.8 Flash and GPT-5.4 Mini. You can compare them side by side on this page.