Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Pick up to 3 models · pricing, context and capabilities · simulate your product cost
Data updated on September 30, 2026· 217 models
Qwen3.6-Max-Preview is a proprietary frontier model from Alibaba Cloud built on a sparse mixture-of-experts architecture with approximately 1 trillion total parameters.
- Reasoning estimated
- Speed estimated
- Input
- Output
- Context
- 262 K tokens
- Max output
- 66 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- $1.03
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- $6.16
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- —
- Batch (input / output)
- —
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- ▲04/20/2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- —
- API id
- qwen/qwen3.6-max-preview
Qwen 3.6 Plus builds on a hybrid architecture that combines efficient linear attention with sparse mixture-of-experts routing, enabling strong scalability and high-performance inference.
- Reasoning estimated
- Speed estimated
- Input
- Output
- Context
- ▲1 M tokens
- Max output
- 66 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$0.325
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$1.95
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- —
- Batch (input / output)
- —
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- 04/02/2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- 2025-04
- API id
- qwen/qwen3.6-plus
Which is the better API choice: Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs Qwen3.6 Plus?
- Qwen3.6 Plus: cheapest input (68% less than Qwen3.6 Max Preview)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: cheapest output
- Qwen3.6 Plus: largest context (1 M)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: the newest (04/20/2026)
Qwen3.6 Plus costs 68% less on input and 68% less on output than Qwen3.6 Max Preview ($0.325 / $1.95 versus $1.03 / $6.16 per million tokens). Qwen3.6 Plus accepts more context (1 M). On capabilities, Qwen3.6 Plus accepts images.
What would your product cost?
Estimate the monthly cost with your app's real volume. List prices, no cache or batch discounts.
With Qwen3.6 Plus you save $27.38 a month versus Qwen3.6 Max Preview (68% less).
The 6 cheapest for this scenario (chat, last 12 months)
- 1Lyria 3 Pro Preview Google$0.00
- 2Lyria 3 Clip Preview Google$0.00
- 3Qwen3.7 Flash Qwen$0.97
- 4DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 DeepSeek$1.55
- 5Ministral 3 3B 2512 Mistral$1.90
- 6Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen$2.02
Paste your prompt: tokens and cost per model
Rough estimate (about 4 characters per token). Nothing is sent to any server.
Cost of sending it 1,000 times (input only)
- 1Qwen3.6 Plus Qwen$0.025
- 2Qwen3.6 Max Preview Qwen$0.078
- 3Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic$0.152
- 4Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic$0.152
- 5Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic$0.304
- 6Claude Opus 5 Anthropic$0.380
- 7Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic$0.760
- 8Claude Fable 5 Anthropic$0.760
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Frequently asked questions
Which is the better API choice: Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus costs 68% less on input and 68% less on output than Qwen3.6 Max Preview ($0.325 / $1.95 versus $1.03 / $6.16 per million tokens). Qwen3.6 Plus accepts more context (1 M). On capabilities, Qwen3.6 Plus accepts images.
Which is cheaper: Qwen3.6 Max Preview and Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus is cheaper: $0.325 per million input tokens and $1.95 per million output tokens, versus $1.03 / $6.16 for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
Which has more context: Qwen3.6 Max Preview and Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus accepts 1 M tokens of context; Qwen3.6 Max Preview accepts 262 K.
Which is newer: Qwen3.6 Max Preview and Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview was released on 04/20/2026; Qwen3.6 Plus on 04/02/2026.
What would 10,000 requests a month cost with Qwen3.6 Max Preview and Qwen3.6 Plus?
With 1,500 input and 400 output tokens per request: Qwen3.6 Max Preview: $40.05; Qwen3.6 Plus: $12.68 a month, at list price.
Where do the prices come from and how often are they updated?
From the public catalogs of OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM, which publish each provider's list prices. They sync once a day and the last update date is shown above the comparison.
What does price per million tokens mean?
It is what the provider charges per million tokens you send (input) or the model generates (output). A token is roughly 4 characters. Output almost always costs more than input.
Sources: OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM. Prices in USD per million tokens, list price, no volume discounts. Prompt tokens are an estimate; each provider's tokenizer may differ.