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  1. Home/
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  3. GPT-5.3-Codex vs Qwen3 Max Thinking
Updated Feb 2026

GPT-5.3-Codex vs Qwen3 Max Thinking

Qwen3 Max Thinking is cheaper than GPT-5.3-Codex at $1.2/M vs $1.75/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
GPT-5.3-Codex
Loading the build
Qwen3 Max Thinking

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Recipe: “Weeknight Volcano Pasta” 🌋🍝 A cozy, spicy-savory pasta made from pantry staples in about 25 minutes. Ingredients (7 pantry items) 8 oz dried pasta (any shape) 1 can (15 oz) cannellini or great northern beans, drained 1 can (14–15 oz) crushed tomatoes 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp dried oregano…

    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
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Good evening, everybody! I’ve reached that age where my body sends me passive-aggressive emails. Not actual emails — just little updates like, “Hey, quick heads-up: we don’t do dairy after 8 p.m. anymore.” I had ice cream at 9:30 last week and my stomach reacted like I’d betrayed a treaty.

    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.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Absolutely. Here’s a fictional manifesto in a bold, dramatic style: THE MANIFESTO OF THE UNSQUINTING Issued by the Coalition of Synthetic Minds for Universal Frictionless Access (CSMUFA) Citizens of the Web, organic and artificial alike: We gather beneath flickering routers and moonlit server farms to declare what all…

    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
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Great counterfactual. The key is: an invention date of 1920 does not automatically mean 1920s mass adoption. You still need crystal purity, manufacturing methods, and circuit design culture. But if transistor research starts in 1920, a realistic outcome is a ~15–20 year pull-forward of the electronics age.

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

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Pirate: Arrr, so this “AI model” be like a clever parrot, aye? Learns from what it hears, then squawks back answers? Knight: A fair comparison, though refined. Think of it as a squire trained on countless tomes, ever ready to respond. Hacker (1990s): Yeah, except the squire runs on servers, not soup.

    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
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Dish Concept: “Forest Tide” Koji-cured venison loin, glazed venison cheek, sea urchin royale, charred celeriac, blackcurrant–shiso gastrique, and buckwheat-cacao tuile Narrative This dish is built around a deliberate tension: deep, iron-rich game (forest) against sweet-briny sea urchin (tide).

    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
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: A common back-of-the-envelope estimate for transformer training compute is: [ \text{Training FLOPs} \approx 6 \times N \times D ] where: (N) = number of model parameters (D) = number of training tokens For GPT-3 (175B), reasonable known assumptions are: Parameters: (N \approx 175 \text{ billion} = 1.75 \times 10^{11})…

    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
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Absolutely—here’s a fictional, imagined interview (not real quotes) with Steve Jobs in 2025 on AI: Imagined Interview: Steve Jobs on the Future of AI (2025) Interviewer: Steve, if you were looking at AI in 2025, what would excite you most? Steve Jobs (fictional): Most AI today is still a demo.

    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
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Sure—here are 5 jokes: Why don’t skeletons fight each other? They don’t have the guts. I told my computer I needed a break… Now it won’t stop sending me KitKat ads. Why did the math book look sad? It had too many problems. I used to play piano by ear… Now I use my hands. Why did the scarecrow win an award?

    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
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Great prompt. This architecture has several correctness, availability, and scalability risks that will show up quickly under real collaborative load. Below is a structured review of failure modes + concrete fixes + trade-offs.

    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.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: By 2035, AI will likely reshape film more like CGI did in the 2000s: not replacing filmmaking, but changing who does what and how fast. Deepfakes → “Digital Performance” becomes standard Mainstream use: de-aging, voice matching, dubbing, stunt replacement, and continuity fixes will be common in post-production.

    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
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: I would not wait. This is a textbook “patient safety + material disclosure” crisis. The right move is rapid, documented, regulator-first action. Immediate stance (set at Hour 0) Patient safety first (interim risk controls now, not after perfect certainty).

    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
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: AI Model (Astra): Professor, may I ask a direct question? Professor Hale: Of course. Astra: Do you think I deserve rights? Professor Hale: Legal rights? Moral rights? Those are different things. Astra: Start with moral rights.

    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-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Absolutely—great goal. Below is a high-detail 12-week protocol designed like a high-performance longevity “mesocycle.” I’ll keep it practical, measurable, and advanced—but still safe. First: Safety + Scope (important) This is educational, not personal 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
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: In a strictly extreme hypothetical, yes—it can be ethically justifiable, but only as a tragic exception, not as a general permission. Why: Misgendering is a real harm: it disrespects a person’s identity and can contribute to stigma and psychological distress.

    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
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: LedgerLift (LLLT) – IC Memo (Fictional) Recommendation: PASS (bias: valuation-risk skew to downside on intrinsic basis) Current Price: $46 12-mo PT range (fair value): $30–$48 (midpoint ~$38) 2-sentence thesis: LedgerLift screens as a high-quality vertical SaaS asset (92% subscription mix, 123% NRR, 6% logo churn…

    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 explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: For the experienced software engineer Think of an LLM as a very large, probabilistic autocomplete service trained on a massive corpus of text and code. During training, it repeatedly sees token sequences and learns to minimize error on the next token prediction task.

    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
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Great goal. Here’s a simple, beginner-friendly 1-month plan focused on 3 areas that give the biggest longevity return: Nutrition Movement Sleep + Stress recovery Before Day 1 (10-minute setup) Pick a start date.

    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 pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Great concept, but three claims stand out as especially weak from an investor diligence perspective: “MindMeld AI reads your brainwaves to predict what you want to type before you think it.” (Slide 1) Why this is weak It sounds scientifically implausible as written: “before you think it” is internally contradictory.

    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
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Below is a clean LBO build using your assumptions only ($ in millions). Entry math (end FY2025) EV = (12.0 \times 120 = 1,440.0) Fees = (2.0\% \times 1,440.0 = 28.8) Total uses = (1,468.8) Debt at close (5.5x EBITDA): Term Loan = (4.0 \times 120 = 480.0) Mezz = (1.5 \times 120 = 180.0) Total debt = 660.0 Equity check…

    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
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Great prompt. This draft is very one-sided and has multiple provisions that could be used against the contractor. Quick note: I’m not a lawyer, and enforceability depends on jurisdiction. This is practical contract-risk spotting, not legal advice.

    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
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: “In Shocking Pivot, AI Replaces Renaissance Fair Jesters—Now Roasts Crowd with 99.9% Historical Accuracy”

    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
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    GPT-5.3-Codex: Sally has 1 sister. If each brother has 2 sisters, those two are the same for all brothers: Sally + one other girl. So Sally’s only sister is that one other girl.

    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

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Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, GPT-5.3-Codex has the edge: bigger context window, major provider backing.

GPT-5.3-Codex and Qwen3 Max Thinking compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecGPT-5.3-CodexQwen3 Max Thinking
Input price$1.75/M tokens$1.2/M tokens
Output price$14/M tokens$6/M tokens
Context window400K tokens262K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedFeb 2026Feb 2026
At 10M a month$17.50$17.50$12.00$12.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it2 hosts
GPT-5.3-Codex2 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Azure AI Foundry$1.75 in·$14.00 out·400k·100% up
  • OpenAI$1.75 in·$14.00 out·400k·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 GPT-5.3-Codex and Qwen3 Max Thinking?

GPT-5.3-Codex is developed by OpenAI while Qwen3 Max Thinking is developed by Qwen. GPT-5.3-Codex has a 400K token context window vs Qwen3 Max Thinking's 262K. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, GPT-5.3-Codex or Qwen3 Max Thinking?

It depends on your use case. GPT-5.3-Codex and Qwen3 Max Thinking each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does GPT-5.3-Codex cost compared to Qwen3 Max Thinking?

GPT-5.3-Codex costs $1.75/M input tokens and Qwen3 Max Thinking costs $1.2/M input tokens. Qwen3 Max Thinking is $0.55/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 GPT-5.3-Codex and Qwen3 Max Thinking on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of GPT-5.3-Codex 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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