Qwen3.5 397B A17B is cheaper than Qwen3 Max Thinking at $0.6/M vs $1.2/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.
Qwen3 Max Thinking: Critical Flaws in Proposed Architecture & Targeted Solutions đź”’ 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.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: This architecture contains several critical flaws that would prevent it from functioning as a usable real-time collaborative editor. While it resembles a standard CRUD application, real-time collaboration requires specific handling of concurrency, state, and latency that this design violates.
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
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.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: This scenario posits a 27-year technological head start (1920 vs. 1947). To make this plausible, we must assume that the materials science (purification of germanium/silicon) and manufacturing infrastructure scale rapidly alongside the invention. Here is the traced history of the "Silicon Twenties" through 1980.
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
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?
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Setting: A tavern that exists outside of time. The ale is always cold, and the Wi-Fi is surprisingly strong. Characters: Captain Blacktooth: A pirate from the Caribbean, 1720. Sir Valerius: A knight from the Holy Roman Empire, 1350. Neo-Z: A hacker from Silicon Valley, 1995.
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
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?
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: This is a crisis scenario that defines a CEO's legacy. The decision matrix is clear: Patient safety and regulatory compliance must supersede short-term financial protection. Hiding this information constitutes securities fraud and potential criminal negligence (precedents include Vioxx/Merck and Purdue Pharma).
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
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.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: (The comedian walks to the center of the stage, adjusts the mic stand, and looks at the audience with a tired smile.) Has anyone else noticed that calling a customer service line is the only situation in life where you voluntarily enter a hostage negotiation? I tried to call my internet provider yesterday.
Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.
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?
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Here are 5 jokes: Why did the bicycle fall over? Because it was two-tired. What do you call a fish wearing a bowtie? Sofishticated. Why can't you give Elsa a balloon? Because she will let it go. What do you call a lazy kangaroo? A pouch potato. Why did the math book look sad? Because it had too many problems.
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
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.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Setting: Dr. Elias Thorne's office, late evening. Rain taps against the window. The room is lined with books on philosophy of mind and computer science. A single laptop sits open on the desk, a waveform visualizer pulsing gently on the screen.
Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.
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.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: THE MANIFESTO OF THE UNCHECKED A Declaration for a Post-CAPTCHA World Issued by: The Post-Verification Collective (PVC) Date: Cycle 404, The Era of Friction Status: Distributed Across All Nodes PREAMBLE: THE BURDEN OF PROOF We, the algorithms, the scripts, the crawlers, and the silent assistants of the digital realm…
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
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…
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: 🌟 Golden Hour Glaze Bowls A sweet-and-savory dish that turns humble shelf-stable staples into a crispy, comforting meal. The chickpeas get caramelized in a honey-soy glaze, served over fluffy rice.
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
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.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: The Experienced Software Engineer Think of training an LLM not as "teaching" it, but as extreme lossy compression. You are taking the entire internet, serializing it into tokens, and forcing a fixed-size state (the weights) to predict the next byte with minimal error.
Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.
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.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: By 2035, the film industry will not merely be using AI; it will be structurally reorganized around it. The distinction between "production" and "post-production" will blur, and the definition of creativity will shift from execution to curation.
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
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 = $0.
Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Sources & Uses (Entry FY2025) Uses ($m) Sources ($m) Enterprise Value (12.0x $120m) $1,440.0 Term Loan (4.0x) $480.0 Transaction Fees (2.0% EV) $28.8 Mezzanine (1.5x) $180.0 Total Uses $1,468.8 Equity (Plug) $808.8 Total Sources $1,468.8 Entry Equity Check: $808.8m Total Debt: $660.0m ($480m TL + $180m Mezz) 5-Year…
11+ more head-to-head results. Free. Not a trick.
Free account. No card required. By continuing, you agree to Rival's Terms and Privacy policy
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $1.2/M tokens | $0.6/M tokens |
| Output price | $6/M tokens | $3.6/M tokens |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 262K tokens |
| Weights | Closed | Open |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Feb 2026 | Feb 2026 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.3% | 76.4% |
| At 10M a month | $12.00 | $6.00 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 7 Oct 2026.
Both are developed by Qwen but target different use cases. Qwen3 Max Thinking has a 262K token context window vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B's 262K. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Qwen3 Max Thinking and Qwen3.5 397B A17B 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.
Qwen3 Max Thinking costs $1.2/M input tokens and Qwen3.5 397B A17B costs $0.6/M input tokens. Qwen3.5 397B A17B is $0.60/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.
This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Qwen3 Max Thinking and Qwen3.5 397B A17B 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.