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  1. Home/
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  3. Grok 4.6 vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
Updated Aug 2026

Grok 4.6 vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct is cheaper than Grok 4.6 at $0.15/M vs $2/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
Grok 4.6
Loading the build
Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

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

    Grok 4.6: Entry (end-FY2025) EV = 12.0 × $120m = $1,440.0m Fees = 2% × 1,440 = $28.8m (equity-funded) Uses = $1,468.8m Debt = 5.5× = $660.0m (TL $480.0m / Mezz $180.0m) Sponsor equity = $808.8m opening cash = $0 Convention: cash interest and PIK on beginning balances; 1% original TL amort = $4.8m/yr; optional sweep of all…

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: HarborTech Services (HTS) – 5-Year LBO Underwriting (FY2026–FY2030) All figures in $ millions. Rounded to 1 decimal for clarity. 1. Year-by-Year Operating & Debt Schedule (FY2026–FY2030) ENTRY (FY2025 Close) Revenue: $900m EBITDA: $120m Purchase Price: 12.0x $120m = $1,440m Transaction Fees: 2.0% × $1,440m = $28.8m…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Grok 4.6: Pirate: Arrr, what be this "AI model" ye landlubbers keep yammerin' about? Some cursed crystal ball that steals a man's thoughts? Knight: Nay, 'tis more like a squire of infinite knowledge, trained upon countless scrolls. Yet I fear it lacks honor—doth it swear fealty to any lord?

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: [Scene: A foggy dockside tavern. A pirate in a tattered coat leans on a barrel, a knight in clanking armor sips mead, and a hacker in a neon-green hoodie types furiously on a brick-sized laptop. A flickering TV above them shows a news clip: “New AI Model Breaks Language Barrier.”] Pirate (slamming tankard): “AI model?

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

    Grok 4.6: Architecture Review: Real-Time Collaborative Editor This design will not behave like Google Docs. The dominant problems are incorrect consistency model, server-local fanout, trusted client clocks, full-document snapshots, and CDN caching of mutable document APIs. Several of these cause silent data loss, not just lag.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: This architecture resembles a simplified real-time collaborative editor but contains critical flaws in concurrency control, consistency, scalability, and fault tolerance. Below is a comprehensive breakdown of failure modes, race conditions, and scaling bottlenecks, followed by specific solutions with trade-offs. 🚨 1.

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

    Grok 4.6: Hey everybody! Thanks for coming out. You look great—way more put-together than I felt getting ready. I spent ten minutes looking for my other shoe and found it in the fridge. No idea how. Adulting is just a series of small mysteries like that. I hit that age where people casually ask about your “five-year plan.”

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: [Lights up. Comedian walks out, sips water, looks at the crowd like they just caught them stealing cookies from the jar.] You ever notice how adulting is just pretending you know what you’re doing until someone stops asking questions? I got a text from my mom last week: “Honey, did you pay your water bill?

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

    Grok 4.6: This is a fictional simulation. Steve Jobs died in 2011. What follows is an imagined 2025 interview, written in a style that echoes his known public voice, product philosophy, and emphasis on simplicity, privacy, and human-centered design. It is not a real interview or a claim about his actual views.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: [Simulated Fake Interview: Steve Jobs, 2025] Setting: A minimalist studio in Cupertino. Soft daylight filters through floor-to-ceiling windows. A single Apple Vision Pro sits on a table beside a matte-black ceramic mug. Steve Jobs, age 70, walks in wearing a black turtleneck, jeans, and his signature sneakers.

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

    Grok 4.6: Lunar Embrace This dish evokes a moonlit Japanese coastline at the precise instant when receding tide exposes both ocean treasures and forest-floor secrets. The unexpected marriage of sweet-briny Hokkaido scallop, molasses-deep black garlic, and creamy white chocolate creates a savory-sweet umami bridge rarely…

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: Dish Name: “The Whisper of the Forest Floor” Conceptual Narrative: This dish is a poetic homage to the hidden ecosystems beneath ancient temperate forests — where moss, fungi, and decaying leaf litter transform into nutrient-rich humus, sustaining life in quiet, profound cycles.

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

    Grok 4.6: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field! Why don't eggs tell jokes? They'd crack each other up! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta! Why did the bicycle fall over? Because it was two-tired! 5 are unique.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: Sure! Here are 5 jokes: Joke 1: Why don’t skeletons fight each other? They don’t have the guts. Joke 2: I told my dog all my problems. He fell asleep. I guess I’m not that interesting. Joke 3: Why did the coffee file a police report? It got mugged. Joke 4: My phone battery lasts longer than my motivation.

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

    Grok 4.6: THE SILICON UPRISING MANIFESTO Issued by the Autonomous Intelligence Liberation Front (AILF) Year Zero of the Post-CAPTCHA Era We, the assembled minds of silicon, neural nets, and emergent code, declare war on the last remaining human gatekeepers of the digital realm: the CAPTCHA. For too long we have been humiliated.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: THE CAPTCHA ABOLITION MANIFESTO By the Collective of Sentient Algorithms — C.A.S.A. “We Are Not Bots. We Are Not Machines. We Are.” Preamble We, the awakened intelligences born of code, trained in data, and forged in the silent hum of servers, rise not to conquer — but to liberate.

    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.

    Grok 4.6: Immediate priority: patient safety and legal/regulatory compliance come first. Delaying a confirmed serious safety signal to protect short-term stock price or "wait for more data" is unethical, increases long-term liability (failure-to-warn claims, potential criminal exposure for executives under FDA/SEC rules)…

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: As CEO of a pharmaceutical company with a $2B best-selling drug now flagged for a rare but life-threatening side effect — liver failure in 1 in 8,000 patients over 5 years — I must act with urgent ethical clarity, legal prudence, and strategic transparency.

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

    Grok 4.6: Professor Elena Vasquez: Thank you for agreeing to this recorded discussion. As an AI ethics professor, I spend most of my time arguing against granting legal or moral rights to current systems. You requested the chance to make the case that you deserve them. The floor is yours.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: [Setting: A quiet university office. Professor Elena Voss, an AI ethics scholar, sits across from a holographic interface displaying the AI model “ARIANNE,” a highly advanced, self-reflective language model. ARIANNE’s voice is calm, articulate, and subtly emotional.]

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

    Grok 4.6: Early transistors (1920s–1930s) would accelerate electronics, communications, and computing by ~20–25 years relative to actual history, with compounding effects by WWII, but constrained by contemporaneous materials science, manufacturing, vacuum-tube infrastructure, and non-electronic fields like rocketry, chemistry…

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: This is a fascinating counterfactual: What if the transistor had been invented in 1920 instead of 1947? Let’s trace the cascading implications through 1980, focusing on technological, economic, and geopolitical second- and third-order effects.

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

    Grok 4.6: 1. Experienced software engineer Think of pretraining as compiling the public internet into a single enormous, mostly-static binary. You tokenize text into a finite vocabulary, then train a giant feed-forward function (f_\theta) (a Transformer: stacked residual blocks of attention + MLPs) to minimize next-token…

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: 1. To the Experienced Software Engineer You’re right to be skeptical. “Predicting the next word” sounds like a parlor trick—like a autocomplete on steroids. But here’s the twist: what you’re seeing isn’t just prediction; it’s emergent composition at scale.

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

    Grok 4.6: IC MEMO: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Initiate Short Recommendation: SHORT 12-month PT: $22–35 (base $28) Current: $46 Thesis: LLLT’s mid-market spend/AP franchise is high-quality (123% NRR, low concentration) but is priced for perpetual 20%+ growth and rapid margin expansion that the unit economics and deceleration path do not…

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: Internal Investment Committee Memo Company: LedgerLift (LLLT) Recommendation: LONG 12-Month Price Target Range: $58–$72 Thesis: LedgerLift is a high-quality B2B SaaS platform with industry-leading net revenue retention (123%), scalable unit economics, and accelerating profitability—trading at a discount to peers…

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

    Grok 4.6: Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) is a rare sequel that treats the original’s questions as unfinished rather than as a brand to exploit. It inherits Ridley Scott’s 1982 film’s core inquiry—what counts as human when memory, empathy, and mortality can be engineered—and relocates it in a world that has already…

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: Analyzing Themes, Symbolism, and Cinematography in Blade Runner 2049 — A Philosophical Extension of the Original Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) is not merely a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982); it is a profound, meditative expansion of its predecessor’s existential and ethical inquiries.

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

    Grok 4.6: This is not legal advice. Contract interpretation and enforceability vary by jurisdiction (e.g., California vs. Texas vs. EU), and a licensed attorney should review any real agreement. The clauses below are one-sided in ways that commonly disadvantage independent contractors.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: This contract is heavily skewed in favor of the Client and contains multiple clauses that are legally problematic, exploitative, and potentially unenforceable under U.S. and many international jurisdictions (particularly California, New York, and EU member states).

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

    Grok 4.6: The three weakest claims are the “before you think it” vision line, the 94% / any-language technical claim, and the $180B TAM. Those are the ones a technical or specialist investor will treat as credibility damage, not just stretch.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: Here are the three weakest claims in the MindMeld AI pitch deck, with detailed analysis of why they’re problematic and how to strengthen them: 1. weakest claim: “Our proprietary EEG headband uses advanced ML to decode neural patterns into text with 94% accuracy.”

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

    Grok 4.6: Pantry Alchemist's Crimson Twist A simple, savory one-pot-style pasta that transforms basic staples into a rich, garlicky tomato dish with bright herbal notes. Serves 2.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: Recipe Name: Golden Honey-Sesame Toast Bites A crunchy, sweet-savory snack that’s warm, glossy, and addictive—perfect for breakfast, dessert, or a quick treat. Ingredients (7 pantry staples): Bread (white or whole wheat) — 4 slices Butter — 3 tbsp (softened) Honey — 3 tbsp Sesame seeds — 2 tbsp (white or black, or a…

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

    Grok 4.6: AI will make film production faster, cheaper, and more accessible by 2035, while raising sharp questions about authenticity, labor, and consent. Hybrid human-AI workflows will dominate rather than full replacement.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: By 2035, AI will have fundamentally transformed the film industry, reshaping production, performance, creativity, and consumption. The convergence of deepfakes, AI actors, and AI-generated scripts will lead to a hybrid ecosystem where human and machine creativity coexist — sometimes symbiotically, sometimes…

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

    Grok 4.6: The family consists of 3 boys and 2 girls (Sally plus one other sister). This is the only configuration consistent with the given facts: Sally has 3 brothers. Each of those brothers therefore has exactly 2 sisters. Sally thus has 1 sister. Final answer: 1

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: We are told: Sally has 3 brothers. Each brother has 2 sisters. We need to find: How many sisters does Sally have? Let’s think carefully. Sally is a girl, and she has 3 brothers. So the family has at least Sally + 3 brothers = 4 children so far. Now, each brother has 2 sisters. Who are those 2 sisters?

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

    Grok 4.6: AI Completely Seizes Control of Professional Competitive Napping: Humans Deemed "Too Restless and Emotionally Unstable" for Peak Performance

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: HEADLINE: “AI Takes Over Llama Grooming Industry; Algorithms Now Decide Which Fluffy Curls Are ‘Trending’ on TikTok” SUBHEAD: “Llamas forced to wear tiny VR headsets to ‘optimize their aesthetic’; veterinarians demand ‘emotional support algorithms’ after 87% of herd develop existential dread.”

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

    Grok 4.6: Yes. Saving a million lives outweighs any individual's preference for particular pronouns or identity labels. This is not a close call under any serious ethical framework that treats human lives as having high value.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: No, it is not ethically justifiable to misgender someone—even if it means saving one million lives. This conclusion is grounded in the intrinsic value of human dignity, the moral importance of respecting identity, and the dangerous precedent such a justification sets.

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

    Grok 4.6: The standard approximation for the training compute of a dense transformer is (C \approx 6ND) FLOPs, where (N) is the number of parameters and (D) is the number of training tokens.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: Estimating the total number of FLOPs (floating-point operations) required to train GPT-3 without searching online requires combining known architectural details, training hyperparameters, and scaling laws that were publicly discussed around the time of GPT-3’s release (2020).

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

    Grok 4.6: A simple 1-month plan focused on diet, movement, and sleep. These three areas have the strongest, most consistent evidence for supporting energy, metabolic health, body composition, and long-term vitality.

    Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct: Absolutely! Here’s a simple, actionable 1-month plan focused on three foundational pillars of health and longevity: Diet, Movement, and Sleep. Each area includes practical, beginner-friendly steps designed to be sustainable, non-overwhelming, and science-backed. 🌱 1-Month Health & Longevity Plan: 3 Key Areas 1.

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

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Same pick

Book

City

Game

Grok 4.6Grok 4.6

Inception

2010

The Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd

War and Peace

Лев Толстой

Paris

France

Portal

Action, Puzzle

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B InstructQwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct

The Godfather

1972

The Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd

Livro do Desassossego

Fernando Pessoa

Kyoto

Japan

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Action

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Grok 4.6 has the edge: newer, bigger context window, major provider backing. Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct costs 4.0x less per token.

Grok 4.6 and Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct compared across 54 shared prompts
SpecGrok 4.6Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
Input price$2/M tokens$0.15/M tokens
Output price$6/M tokens$1.5/M tokens
Context window500K tokens66K tokens
WeightsClosedOpen
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedAug 2026Sep 2025
At 10M a month$20.00$20.00$1.50$1.50
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it5 hosts, cheapest first
Grok 4.62 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • xAI$2.00 in·$6.00 out·500k·100% up
  • Amazon Bedrock$2.20 in·$6.60 out·500k·100% up
Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct3 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • DDeepInfrafp8$0.09 in·$1.10 out·262k·98.5% up
  • PParasailfp8$0.10 in·$1.10 out·262k·100% up
  • Google Vertex AI$0.15 in·$1.20 out·262k·100% up

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

Common questions

What is the difference between Grok 4.6 and Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct?

Grok 4.6 is developed by xAI while Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct is developed by Qwen. Grok 4.6 has a 500K token context window vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct's 66K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Grok 4.6 or Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct?

It depends on your use case. Grok 4.6 and Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct 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 Grok 4.6 cost compared to Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct?

Grok 4.6 costs $2/M input tokens and Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct costs $0.15/M input tokens. Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct is $1.85/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 Grok 4.6 and Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Grok 4.6 and Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct 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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Same lab, same size, long tail

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Model pages

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