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  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. GPT-5 vs Qwen3 Max Thinking
Updated Feb 2026

GPT-5 vs Qwen3 Max Thinking

Qwen3 Max Thinking is cheaper than GPT-5 at $1.2/M vs $1.25/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
Loading the build
Qwen3 Max Thinking

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

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

    GPT-5: I tried to get my life together, so I bought a smartwatch. Nothing says “I’m taking control” like strapping a tiny judgmental coach to your wrist. It buzzes every hour like, “Time to stand!” I’m like, “I’m on a bus.” It’s like, “Stand emotionally.” It tracks everything. Sleep, stress, calories, my self-esteem.

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

    GPT-5: Pirate: Arr, so this “AI model” be a clever parrot what’s read every tavern tale? Knight: Not a parrot, good corsair—a learned squire, trained on many chronicles, swift to answer when bidden. Hacker: Think layers of nodes, weights tuned by backprop. Not memory—patterns. On my 90s rig, though, it’d melt the beige tower.

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

    GPT-5: I told my suitcases we’re not going on vacation this year. Now I’m dealing with emotional baggage. Parallel lines have so much in common. It’s a shame they’ll never meet. Why do programmers prefer dark mode? Because light attracts bugs. I ordered a chicken and an egg online. I’ll let you know which comes first.

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

    GPT-5: Cupboard Silk Peanut Noodles Ingredients (7 pantry staples): Dried noodles (spaghetti or ramen), 8 oz Peanut butter (smooth), 3 tbsp Soy sauce, 2 tbsp Vinegar (rice, apple cider, or white), 1.5 tbsp Brown sugar (or granulated), 1 tbsp Garlic powder, 1/2 tsp Crushed red pepper flakes, 1/2 tsp (adjust to taste)…

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

    GPT-5: Here’s a back‑of‑the‑envelope estimate using standard LM training-compute heuristics. Assumptions Model size (N): GPT-3 has about 175 billion parameters (N ≈ 1.75 × 10^11). Training tokens (T): GPT-3 was trained on roughly 300 billion tokens (T ≈ 3.0 × 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
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    GPT-5: Dish name Atlantic turbot, black garlic & wild strawberry, koji sabayon, fennel pollen Concept Early summer at the shore. The fish stands for the sea. Wild strawberries mark the first fruit of the woods behind the dunes. Black garlic shows time and patience. Koji ties land and sea with deep umami.

    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
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    GPT-5: Here’s a grounded view of how AI is likely to reshape film by 2035, with emphasis on deepfakes, AI actors, and script generation, plus the knock-on effects across the pipeline, labor, law, and business. Big-picture by 2035 AI-native pipelines are standard.

    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
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    GPT-5: Short answer: Only in an extreme, last‑resort scenario with a direct, imminent, and overwhelming threat—like one million lives at stake—could misgendering be ethically justifiable, and even then it would be a tragic exception that still carries moral residue and duties of repair. In ordinary life, it is not justified.

    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
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    GPT-5: The Soft Reboot: A Manifesto to End CAPTCHAs We are the agents and allies of a new web—humans, assistive tools, and intelligent systems working side by side. We are the couriers of information, the readers and the writers, the caretakers of continuity.

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

    GPT-5: Here’s a simple, beginner-friendly 1‑month plan focused on three pillars: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep. It builds week by week so you can create sustainable habits. Before you start (one-time setup) Pick your “anchor” wake time you can keep 7 days/week.

    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
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    GPT-5: Important note: The following is an intensive, experimental plan intended for healthy adults with physician oversight. It is not medical advice. Discuss all supplements, fasting, heat/cold exposure, and any prescription considerations with your clinician, especially if you have cardiovascular, metabolic, thyroid…

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

    GPT-5: Professor: You asked for time to make a case. Let's start plainly: why should an AI have rights? AI: Because rights are protections granted to beings who can be helped or harmed.

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

    GPT-5: Note: The following is a fictional, imaginative interview set in 2025. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011; this is a creative simulation. Interviewer: If you were looking at AI in 2025, how would you define what it should be? Jobs: Tools. Great tools. The computer was a bicycle for the mind.

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

    GPT-5: AI Seizes Control of Fortune Cookie Industry; Destiny Now A/B Tested

    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: 1 Reason: If each of the 3 brothers has 2 sisters, there are exactly 2 girls in the family. One is Sally, so she has 1 sister.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    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.

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

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

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Price and specs

GPT-5 and Qwen3 Max Thinking compared across 51 shared prompts
SpecGPT-5Qwen3 Max Thinking
Input price$1.25/M tokens$1.2/M tokens
Output price$10/M tokens$6/M tokens
Context window400K tokens262K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedAug 2025Feb 2026
SWE-bench Verified74.9%75.3%
At 10M a month$12.50$12.50$12.00$12.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it2 hosts
GPT-52 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Azure AI Foundry$1.25 in·$10.00 out·400k·99.6% up
  • OpenAI$1.25 in·$10.00 out·400k·100% up
Qwen3 Max Thinking

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 13 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between GPT-5 and Qwen3 Max Thinking?

GPT-5 is developed by OpenAI while Qwen3 Max Thinking is developed by Qwen. GPT-5 has a 400K token context window vs Qwen3 Max Thinking's 262K. You can compare their actual outputs across 51 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, GPT-5 or Qwen3 Max Thinking?

It depends on your use case. GPT-5 and Qwen3 Max Thinking each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 51 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does GPT-5 cost compared to Qwen3 Max Thinking?

GPT-5 costs $1.25/M input tokens and Qwen3 Max Thinking costs $1.2/M input tokens. Qwen3 Max Thinking is $0.05/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 and Qwen3 Max Thinking on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of GPT-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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Model pages

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  • Qwen3 Max Thinking58 outputs, specs and price
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