Model comparison
Mistral Large 3 vs Qwen3-Max
Mistral against Qwen, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.
Catalog record checked September 5, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below
Mistral
Mistral Large 3
Frontier · Open weights
Qwen
Qwen3-Max
Frontier
| Specification | Mistral Large 3 | Qwen3-Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral | Qwen |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | Winner: 262K | 66K |
| Input / 1M tokens | Winner: $0.50 | $1.20 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Winner: $1.50 | $6 |
| Weights | Open | Closed |
| Parameters | 675B total / 41B active (sparse MoE) | 1T (proprietary) |
| Reasoning levels | Not verifiedUnverified | low, high, max |
| Modalities | text, image | text, image, video |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Not disclosedUnverified |
| API model id | mistral-large-3 | qwen3-max |
| Released | December 1, 2025 | September 23, 2025 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | 46 | Winner: 52 |
| GPQA Diamond (2025-12-02) | 43.9 | Not verifiedUnverified |
Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
- 2025-12-02: Mistral — Introducing Mistral 3 (vendor, base model, 5-shot no CoT); independent review concursGraduate-level science reasoning: multiple-choice questions written by domain PhDs. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Small question pool: differences under ~2 points are within run-to-run noise. Chain-of-thought vs direct answering must match to compare.
Pricing tiers: Mistral Large 3: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05/MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0), EU-hosted. · Qwen3-Max: Qwen API $1.20/$6.00 per MTok (≤32K); higher tiers for 32K–256K. OpenRouter lists ~$0.78/$3.90. Proprietary, API-only.
Mistral Large 3
Mistral Large 3 is Mistral's flagship — 262K-context, multimodal, Apache-2.0 open-weight at $0.50/$1.50.
Best for
- Open-weight deployments
- Multimodal EU-hosted inference
- Balanced frontier work
Watch out
Verify multimodal support and EU data-residency on your endpoint.
Qwen3-Max
Qwen3-Max is Alibaba's proprietary 1-trillion-parameter API model with multimodal input.
Best for
- Agentic coding
- Multimodal knowledge work
- Long-context via API
Watch out
Max line is proprietary/API-only (no published weights). Per-provider prices differ.
When the cheaper one wins
Mistral Large 3 is cheaper on output at $1.50 per million tokens against $6 for Qwen3-Max — about 4.0×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.
Run the model pickerEvidence confidence: High
How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.
- Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
- 4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: reasoning levels.
- 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
- Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 6 days ago.
- Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.
Source receipts
Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.
- Mistral Large 3: Mistral docs — mistral-large-2512 (675B total / 41B active, 256K) (accessed 2026-09-05)
- Mistral Large 3: Mistral — Introducing Mistral 3 (sparse MoE parameters) (accessed 2026-09-05)
- Qwen3-Max: OpenRouter — Qwen3-Max (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Qwen3-Max: AI Release Tracker — Qwen3-Max (accessed 2026-08-29)
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- Claude Mythos 5.1 vs Qwen3-Max
Diving deeper on one model? Mistral Large 3 · Qwen3-Max
Common questions
Mistral Large 3 vs Qwen3-Max
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is Mistral Large 3 or Qwen3-Max cheaper for input?
Mistral Large 3 is cheaper at $0.50 per million input tokens, against $1.20 for Qwen3-Max — roughly 2.4× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Mistral Large 3 has tiered pricing: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05/MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0), EU-hosted. Qwen3-Max has tiered pricing: Qwen API $1.20/$6.00 per MTok (≤32K); higher tiers for 32K–256K. OpenRouter lists ~$0.78/$3.90. Proprietary, API-only.
Is Mistral Large 3 or Qwen3-Max cheaper for output?
Mistral Large 3 is cheaper at $1.50 per million output tokens, against $6 for Qwen3-Max — roughly 4.0× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Mistral Large 3 has tiered pricing: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05/MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0), EU-hosted. Qwen3-Max has tiered pricing: Qwen API $1.20/$6.00 per MTok (≤32K); higher tiers for 32K–256K. OpenRouter lists ~$0.78/$3.90. Proprietary, API-only.
Which has the larger context window, Mistral Large 3 or Qwen3-Max?
Both accept about 262K tokens of context, so document length will not decide between them.
Should I use Mistral Large 3 or Qwen3-Max?
Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Mistral Large 3 suits open-weight deployments; Qwen3-Max suits agentic coding.
Can I self-host Mistral Large 3 or Qwen3-Max?
Mistral Large 3 publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Qwen3-Max is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.
Next step
Choosing between them
The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.
- Input price: Mistral Large 3 costs $0.50 per 1M tokens versus $1.20 for Qwen3-Max — a 2.4x difference at the headline tier.
- Measured capability: Qwen3-Max leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 52 to 46 (measured 2026-08-14).
- Deployment: Mistral Large 3 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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