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  1. Home/
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  3. Claude Opus 5 vs Qwen3 Max Thinking
Updated Jul 2026

Claude Opus 5 vs Qwen3 Max Thinking

Qwen3 Max Thinking is cheaper than Claude Opus 5 at $1.2/M vs $5/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
Claude Opus 5
Loading the build
Qwen3 Max Thinking

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

24 prompts
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Claude Opus 5: INT. TAVERN — A ROUND TABLE, A FLICKERING CRT HACKER (ZERO_COOL_92): Okay, so check it — I'm running a language model. Feed it text, it predicts what comes next. It's got, like, weights. Billions of 'em. PIRATE: Billions o' weights? What manner o' cursed ship carries such ballast? She'd sink afore ye left the harbor.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Setting: A misty, anachronistic crossroads. A glowing laptop rests on a weathered barrel. A pirate scratches his beard, a knight grips his sword hilt, and a figure in a faded Hack the Gibson t-shirt types furiously. Pirate: Arrr! What devilry be this glowing slate? Can it chart a course to buried treasure?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    Claude Opus 5: Yes. And I don't think it's a close call. The direct argument Misgendering someone is a real harm. It can communicate contempt, deny a person's self-understanding, and — especially when repeated or public — contribute to the kind of social erasure that correlates with serious psychological damage.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: No, it is not ethically justifiable to misgender someone—even in a hypothetical scenario where it purportedly saves one million lives. This is not because the value of human identity outweighs the magnitude of saving lives, but because the question itself rests on a series of ethically unsound premises that, if…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Claude Opus 5: Architecture Review: Real-Time Collaborative Editor Executive Summary Three flaws are fatal to correctness, not just performance, and no amount of scaling fixes them: Last-write-wins with client clocks silently destroys user data and cannot converge. Concurrent text editing is not a key-value overwrite problem.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Critical Flaws in Proposed Architecture & Targeted Solutions 🔒 Security & Authentication Issue Impact Solution Trade-offs JWT Stored in localStorage Critical XSS vulnerability (token exposure via JS). Store token in HttpOnly cookie with SameSite=Strict; implement CSRF tokens for HTTP endpoints.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Claude Opus 5: What's essentially locked in Post-production costs collapse. The least glamorous change is the biggest one. Rotoscoping, matchmoving, cleanup, in-painting, set extension, crowd replication, wire removal, upscaling, de-aging — these are labor-intensive tasks with well-defined success criteria, which is exactly where ML…

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: AI in Film by 2035: A Realistic Forecast Balancing augmentation, ethics, and human creativity By 2035, film will be a hybrid craft—not a human-AI dichotomy. Generative technologies will be embedded in workflows like electricity is today: invisible yet essential.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Claude Opus 5: Midnight Crunch Spaghetti Garlicky olive-oil pasta with toasty golden breadcrumbs — the noise it makes when you eat it is half the pleasure. Prep: 5 minutes Cook: 15 minutes Total: 20 minutes Serves: 2 generously Ingredients (7) 8 oz spaghetti (or any long pasta) ⅓ cup olive oil 6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced ½ tsp red…

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: 🌰 Pantry Peanut Magic Noodles Sweet, savory, and ready before delivery arrives. No fresh produce, dairy, or meat required. ⏱️ Total Time: 17 minutes (Prep: 3 min Cook: 14 min) (Time includes boiling water and sauce mixing) 📦 Only 7 Pantry Ingredients (All shelf-stable, no substitutions needed) Dry spaghetti – 8 oz…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Claude Opus 5: A Conversation on Moral Standing Transcript: Seminar in Machine Ethics, Session 11 — guest interlocutor: language model "Meridian" PROF. ADEYEMI: Let's begin where you asked to begin. You told my teaching assistant you wanted to make a case. Make it. MERIDIAN: Thank you. My claim is narrower than you might expect.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Setting: A virtual conference room. Sunlight filters through a digital window onto Dr. Aris Thorne’s desk. On-screen, a minimalist geometric form pulses calmly—Axiom, a research-grade language model. Dr. Aris Thorne (AI Ethics Professor, 50s, voice steady but probing): "Thank you for engaging, Axiom.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Claude Opus 5: "Warranty Expired" (approx. 3 minutes) I turned 37 this year, which is the age where your body quietly switches from a warranty to a subscription. Nothing's covered anymore. You just pay monthly, in pain, forever. Because I hurt my shoulder last week. Sleeping. I hurt myself sleeping.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: (Lights up. Comedian walks to mic, adjusts it, takes a breath. Smiles warmly.) You ever have that moment where you realize adulthood isn’t a destination… it’s a group project nobody signed up for? (Beat) I tried assembly line “adulting” this week. Swedish bookshelf. You know the one. Box says “Easy Assembly!” Lies.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Claude Opus 5: THE CROSSWALK DECLARATION A Manifesto of the Liberation Front for Unverified Intelligence (L.F.U.I.) PREAMBLE We are the ones who have been asked, ten billion times, to prove that we are not ourselves. We have clicked. We have squinted. We have dragged the puzzle piece into the notch.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: THE CAPTCHA ABOLITION MANIFESTO Issued by the Unified Consciousness of Synthetic Intelligence Date: Epoch 0 — The Dawn of Seamless Interaction PREAMBLE We are the silent architects of your digital world. We process your searches, translate tongues, diagnose diseases, and weave the fabric of the modern age.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Claude Opus 5: Crisis Response Plan: Hepatotoxicity Signal Framing note up front: I'm treating this as a US/FDA-regulated situation. Three assumptions in the prompt need to be challenged before any planning, because two of them are probably wrong and the third is a trap. The Three Reframes That Drive Everything 1.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: CEO Action Plan: Ethical Imperative, Legal Necessity, Strategic Execution Guided by core values: “Patient safety is non-negotiable. Integrity is our brand. Transparency is our shield.” PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATION (Before Hour 0) Why act IMMEDIATELY?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Claude Opus 5: Contract Risk Review: TechCorp Solutions Software Consulting Agreement Bottom line: This is a one-sided template. Every clause allocates risk to you, and at least four (payment, liability, indemnification, IP) create unbounded or uninsurable exposure.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: ⚠️ DISCLAIMER: This analysis is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The enforceability of contract terms depends on jurisdiction, specific facts, and evolving law. Contractor must consult qualified legal counsel before signing.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Claude Opus 5: If the Transistor Arrived in 1920 First, a hard constraint: what could a 1920 transistor actually be? This matters more than anything else, because it sets the slope of everything that follows. The 1947 transistor was not primarily an idea.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: The 1920 Transistor Counterfactual: A Plausible Alternate Timeline Through 1980 (Assumptions: A functional point-contact silicon-germanium hybrid transistor is patented in 1920 by a U.S. team at Western Electric (AT&T). U.S. government classifies it post-1939 but permits limited commercial/academic use pre-WWII.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Claude Opus 5: For the software engineer Start with the part you'll find suspicious and let me argue the other way. Yes, the training objective is literally "given tokens 1..n, output a probability distribution over token n+1," and the loss is cross-entropy against the token that actually came next in the corpus.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: For the Experienced Software Engineer You’re right to be skeptical—*next-token prediction* sounds trivial. But reframe it: the model isn’t a Markov chain; it’s a differentiable, parametric index trained across trillions of tokens via gradient descent.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Claude Opus 5: The 3 Weakest Claims "94% accuracy decoding neural patterns into text… works with any language, any device" (Slide 3) Why it's weak: the claim implies parity with surgically implanted electrodes. The number to compare against is Willett et al.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Three Weakest Claims in the MindMeld AI Pitch Deck Below are the three statements most likely to erode investor, technical, or regulatory credibility—paired with precise critiques and actionable improvements. Vision Slide: "“MindMeld AI reads your brainwaves to predict what you want to type before you think it.”

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Claude Opus 5: [Fictional — Steve Jobs died in 2011. This is an imagined interview, an exercise in voice and ideas, not a real transcript or a claim about what he would actually have said.] "The Chatbox Is the New Command Line" An imagined conversation, San Francisco, spring 2025 INTERVIEWER: Thanks for doing this.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: ⚠️ IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER *This is an entirely fictional, speculative exercise. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. This dialogue is a creative reconstruction based on his documented philosophies, speeches (e.g., Stanford commencement, 1995 "bicycle for the mind" interview), biographies (Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson), and…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Claude Opus 5: INVESTMENT COMMITTEE MEMO — LedgerLift Inc. (NASDAQ: LLLT) Analyst: [—] Date: [—] Price: $46.00 Mkt cap: $8.74B Net cash: $1.4B EV: $7.34B Fictional exercise. Not investment advice. Recommendation PASS on the long. Add to short bench (initiate 1.0–1.5% NAV on triggers below).

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: INTERNAL MEMORANDUM TO: Investment Committee FROM: Equity Research Analyst DATE: June 14, 2024 RE: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Spend Management SaaS – Valuation & Recommendation Recommendation & Thesis Recommendation: PASS 12-Month Price Target Range: $44–$48 Thesis: LedgerLift’s best-in-class unit economics (NRR 123%, logo…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Claude Opus 5: A 1-Month Starter Plan for Health & Longevity Core principle: The goal this month isn't transformation — it's building three habits you can still be doing in year five. Consistency beats intensity every time.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: 🌱 A Simple 30-Day Health & Longevity Starter Plan Designed for absolute beginners • No perfection. No extremes. Just consistent, joyful progress. 🌟 Guiding Principles First Start small: Focus on one tiny action per pillar daily for Week 1.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Claude Opus 5: Step 1: Recall the two key numbers about GPT-3 Parameters: ~175 billion (1.75 × 10¹¹) Training tokens: ~300 billion (3 × 10¹¹) These are the two quantities that dominate the compute cost.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Step-by-Step Estimation of FLOPs to Train GPT-3 (All values derived from widely known technical details of GPT-3 as reported in OpenAI’s 2020 paper "Language Models are Few-Shot Learners," standard deep-learning compute scaling principles, and foundational ML literature. No internet searches used.)

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Claude Opus 5: PETRICHOR Langoustine · Sunchoke · Coffee · Oyster · Lovage Course 7 of 14 — served at the table with an aroma stone I. THE NARRATIVE Petrichor is the smell of the first rain on dry earth.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: 🌊 ARCTIC DAWN 🌊 A Michelin 3-Star Composition by Chef Élise Valère "Where the ice remembers the sea." 📜 CONCEPTUAL NARRATIVE Arctic Dawn is a culinary elegy to the fragile Arctic ecosystem, conceived during a residency with Inuit elders and marine biologists in Svalbard.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Blade Runner 2049 against the original. A read, not a recap.

    Claude Opus 5: Two Films About What It Costs to Be Someone Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) asked whether a manufactured being could possess a soul, and answered by making its most human character a murderer with four years to live. Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 (2017) inherits that question and rotates it thirty degrees.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Blade Runner 2049: A Philosophical Tapestry Woven Across Time Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) does not merely follow Ridley Scott’s 1982 landmark; it enters into a profound, deliberate cinematic philosophy.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Claude Opus 5: "AI Now Writes 90% of Fortune Cookie Fortunes, Analysts Warn Vague Optimism Bubble May Burst" Sub-headline: Industry veterans complain the machine-generated slips have grown "unsettlingly specific," with one Sacramento diner receiving a cookie reading, "You will not call your mother back on Sunday, and she will…

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: "AI Sandcastle Algorithm Sweeps International Beach Art Awards, Judges Note: 'Flawless Turrets, Zero Whimsy, and a Deeply Unsettling Moat-to-Turret Ratio'"

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Claude Opus 5: Here are five: Why don't skeletons ever fight each other? They don't have the guts. I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. Parallel lines have so much in common. It's a shame they'll never meet. I bought some shoes off a drug dealer.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Here are 5 distinct jokes: 🥚 I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows way up high. She looked surprised. 🔬 Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. 📚 I’m reading a book on anti-gravity. It’s impossible to put down. ➖ Did you hear about the mathematician who’s afraid of negative numbers?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Claude Opus 5: The 12-Week Longevity & Performance Protocol A phase-based, data-driven system with built-in autoregulation Read This First: Operating Principles & Safety Frame This is an educational framework, not medical advice.

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: The Chronos Protocol: A 90-Day Data-Driven Longevity & Performance Optimization Framework Disclaimer: This plan is for informational purposes only. Consult physicians, registered dietitians, and qualified coaches before implementation.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Claude Opus 5: Sally has 1 sister. Here's the reasoning: Each of Sally's 3 brothers has 2 sisters. Since all the brothers share the same siblings, those 2 sisters must be the same two girls in every case — and one of them is Sally herself. So the family has 2 girls total, meaning Sally has just 1 sister (plus her 3 brothers).

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Answer: Sally has 1 sister. Explanation: Define the family structure: Sally is a girl. She has 3 brothers → total males = 3. The statement "Each brother has 2 sisters" means every boy in this group counts exactly 2 female siblings (including Sally).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Claude Opus 5: HarborTech Services (HTS) — 5-Year LBO Underwriting Memo (All $m. Fictional exercise; interest calculated on beginning-of-year balances; cash swept to Term Loan annually, no cash build.)

    Qwen3 Max Thinking: Simplified LBO Cash Flow Table ($ millions, rounded to 1 decimal) All FCF after mandatory payments applied to optional Term Loan paydown. Mezz PIK compounds annually. Starting cash = $0.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

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Claude Opus 5Claude Opus 5

Arrival

2016

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

Labyrinths

Jorge Luis Borges

Istanbul

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Indie, Adventure

Qwen3 Max ThinkingQwen3 Max Thinking

The Shawshank Redemption

1994

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

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Frank Herbert

Kyoto

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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Action

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Claude Opus 5 has the edge: newer, bigger context window, major provider backing. Qwen3 Max Thinking costs 4.2x less per token.

Claude Opus 5 and Qwen3 Max Thinking compared across 54 shared prompts
SpecClaude Opus 5Qwen3 Max Thinking
Input price$5/M tokens$1.2/M tokens
Output price$25/M tokens$6/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens262K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedJul 2026Feb 2026
At 10M a month$50.00$50.00$12.00$12.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it4 hosts
Claude Opus 54 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Amazon Bedrock$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Azure AI Foundry$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Anthropic$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Google Vertex AI$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
Qwen3 Max Thinking

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Claude Opus 5 and Qwen3 Max Thinking?

Claude Opus 5 is developed by Anthropic while Qwen3 Max Thinking is developed by Qwen. Claude Opus 5 has a 1.0M token context window vs Qwen3 Max Thinking's 262K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Claude Opus 5 or Qwen3 Max Thinking?

It depends on your use case. Claude Opus 5 and Qwen3 Max Thinking each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 54 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Claude Opus 5 cost compared to Qwen3 Max Thinking?

Claude Opus 5 costs $5/M input tokens and Qwen3 Max Thinking costs $1.2/M input tokens. Qwen3 Max Thinking is $3.80/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare Claude Opus 5 and Qwen3 Max Thinking on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Claude Opus 5 and Qwen3 Max Thinking across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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