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  5. Qwen3.5 9BvsQwen3.8 Max (0902)
Updated Sep 2026

Qwen3.5 9BvsQwen3.8 Max (0902)

Qwen3.5 9B is cheaper than Qwen3.8 Max (0902) at $0.1/M vs $2/M input tokens.

Qwen3.5 9B and Qwen3.8 Max (0902) compared across 3 shared prompts
SpecQwen3.5 9BQwen3.8 Max (0902)
Input price$0.1/M tokens$2/M tokens
Output price$0.15/M tokens$6/M tokens
Context window262K tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsOpenClosed
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedMar 2026Sep 2026
Side by side

Same prompt, both answers

Opening lines from 2 of the 3 prompts both answered. Formatting stripped, words untouched.

Simple 7-Ingredient Recipe

Create a simple recipe for a delicious dish (sweet or savory) using only 7 common pantry ingredients. Include a creative name for the dish…

Qwen3.5 9B249 words
Recipe: The Golden Peanut Butter Noodles Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 10 minutes Total Time: 15 minutes Ingredients (Exactly 7 Common Pantry Items) Dry Spaghetti (or any long pasta) Peanut Butter (creamy, no honey) Soy Sauce Honey Sesame Oil Garlic Powder Water (for boiling) (Note: Add a pinch of Salt and optional…
Read the full answer
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)230 words
🍯 Midnight Crispy Chickpea Bowl A sweet-savory, crispy rice bowl that comes together faster than delivery. Ingredients (7) # Ingredient Amount 1 Canned chickpeas (drained & patted dry) 1 can (15 oz) 2 Soy sauce 3 tbsp 3 Honey 2 tbsp 4 Garlic (minced) 3 cloves 5 Vegetable oil 2 tbsp 6 Instant or leftover cooked rice 2…
Read the full answer

Explain Like I'm a Specific Expert

Explain how a large language model (like GPT or Claude) learns and generates text to each of these three audiences: 1. **An experienced…

Qwen3.5 9B949 words
For the Experienced Software Engineer Imagine this system not as a thinking brain, but as a massive, stateless API that has been trained to predict the next operation in a sequence.
Read the full answer
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)1,046 words
For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of an LLM as a lossy compression function trained on a massive corpus. During training, you're essentially building a statistical model of "given this sequence of tokens, what's the probability distribution over the next token?"
Read the full answer
Our Verdict
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Qwen3.5 9B
Qwen3.5 9BRunner-up

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Qwen3.8 Max (0902) has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window.

Qwen3.5 9B costs 40x less per token.

Slight edge
API pricing

Cost per 1M tokens

Qwen3.5 9B
Input
$0.10
20× cheaper
Output
$0.15
40× cheaper
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Input
$2.00
Output
$6.00

Qwen3.5 9B is cheaper on both: 20× input, 40× output.

Where to run it

7 hosts, cheapest first

Qwen3.5 9B6 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
DDarkbloomfp4$0.08 in·$0.13 out·262k·100% upDDeepInfrabf16$0.10 in·$0.15 out·262k·99.8% upSSiliconFlowfp8$0.10 in·$0.15 out·262k·98.4% upVVenicefp8$0.10 in·$0.15 out·256k·99.6% upPParasailbf16$0.10 in·$0.25 out·262k·99.5% upTTogether$0.17 in·$0.25 out·262k·98.9% up
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Alibaba Cloud$2.00 in·$6.00 out·1M·100% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 22 Sep 2026.

Research

What we learned reading every model

FAQ

Common questions

Both are developed by Qwen but target different use cases. Qwen3.5 9B has a 262K token context window vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)'s 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 3 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

It depends on your use case. Qwen3.5 9B and Qwen3.8 Max (0902) each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 3 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

Qwen3.5 9B costs $0.1/M input tokens and Qwen3.8 Max (0902) costs $2/M input tokens. Qwen3.5 9B is $1.90/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 Qwen3.5 9B and Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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.

Keep exploring

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Model pages

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Qwen3.8 Max (0902) logo
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)3 outputs, specs and price
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