Alibaba Cloud (Qwen) · AI model
Qwen3.8-Max
Flagship Qwen3.8 model on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio: a 2.4-trillion-parameter MoE with text, image and video input, a 1M-token context window, up to 131,072 output tokens and a hybrid thinking mode.
Last verified Available 12 sources
Key specs
- Provider
- Alibaba Cloud (Qwen)
- Family
- Qwen3.8
- API identifier
- qwen3.8-max
- Availability
- Available
- Release date
- 2026-08-02
- Context window
- 1,000,000 tokens
- Max output
- 131,072 tokens
- API access
- Yes
- Consumer app
- Yes
Capabilities
Inputs
- Text input Yes
- Image input Yes
- Audio input No Input modalities listed as image, text, video.
- Video input Yes Video up to 2 hours / 2 GB; Alibaba Cloud directs users to qwen3.8-omni-flash to understand sound in a video.
- File input Partial PDF only, via PDF understanding (Chat Completions API, not Responses API); max 150 MB / 256 pages; a per-page document parsing fee applies (Singapore: $0.0033 per page; not listed as a price row).
Outputs
- Text output Yes
- Image output No
- Audio output No
Features
- Reasoning Optional Hybrid thinking mode, enabled by default; can be disabled per request; thinking_budget configurable.
- Tool calling Yes
- Web search Yes Built-in web search; Singapore (International) scope.
"Unknown" means we have not verified this capability yet; it does not mean the model lacks it.
Pricing
Estimate your monthly cost →| Dimension | Tier | Price | Since | Verified | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input tokens | base | $2.00 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | qwen3.8-max Model Info - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Singapore (International) list price; no input-length tiers (0 < tokens <= 1M). Same price for thinking and non-thinking modes. |
| Cached input tokens | base | $0.25 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | qwen3.8-max Model Info - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Implicit cache hit. |
| Cache writes | base | $2.50 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | qwen3.8-max Model Info - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Explicit cache creation. |
| Output tokens | base | $6.00 per 1M tokens | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | qwen3.8-max Model Info - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Same price for thinking (chain of thought + answer) and non-thinking output. |
| Tool and search requests | base | $10.00 per 1,000 requests | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | Web search with large models - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Singapore: 'agent' search strategy, or the web_search tool via the Responses API or Anthropic-compatible method; per 1,000 calls, plus retrieved content billed as input tokens. No fee is listed for the default turbo/max strategies |
| Other | base | $0.17 per 1M units | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-25 | qwen3.8-max Model Info - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Explicit cache read (explicit cache hit). |
Prices are shown in the currency the provider publishes; we never convert currencies.
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Setting | Score | Reported by | Measured | Verified | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AutomationBench % tasks completed correctly, higher is better | 600-task public subset, Pass@1; effort not stated; harness not stated | 27.3 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-25 | Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03) |
| CharXiv Reasoning accuracy %, higher is better | reasoning questions (RQ), with code interpreter (CI); effort not stated | 93.5 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-25 | Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03) |
| reasoning questions (RQ), without code interpreter (CI); effort not stated | 88.4 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-25 | Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03) | |
| DeepSWE v1.1 % resolved (pass@1), higher is better | v1.1 (113 tasks); xhigh effort; mini-swe-agent | 57 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-25 | DeepSWE leaderboard (Datacurve) |
| v1.1; effort not stated; best of Claude Code and mini-SWE-agent harnesses (Claude Code best), temp 1.0, top_p 0.95, 256K context | 56.6 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-25 | Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03) | |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2) accuracy %, higher is better | Tiers 1-3 v2; snapshot qwen3.8-max-0902; xhigh effort; Epoch harness (Python tool) | 65.6 % | Third party | 2026-09-02 | 2026-10-25 | FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2) leaderboard (Epoch AI) |
| Tiers 1-3 v2; xhigh effort; Epoch harness (Python tool) | 74.7 % | Third party | 2026-08-04 | 2026-10-25 | FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2) leaderboard (Epoch AI) | |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 Elo, higher is better | 'Qwen3.8 Max'; effort not shown; Stirrup agent harness | 1,604 Elo | Third party | 2026-10-25 | 2026-10-25 | GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis) |
| snapshot 'Qwen3.8 Max (0902)'; effort not shown; Stirrup agent harness | 1,666 Elo | Third party | 2026-10-25 | 2026-10-25 | GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis) | |
| Humanity's Last Exam accuracy %, higher is better | no tools; effort not stated; judge not stated | 43.6 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-25 | Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03) |
| with tools; effort not stated; judge not stated | 56.2 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-25 | Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03) | |
| OSWorld 2.0 % tasks completed, higher is better | release and task set not stated, binary; effort not stated | 19.4 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-25 | Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03) |
| release and task set not stated, partial; effort not stated | 46.7 % | Self-reported | — | 2026-10-25 | Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03) | |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 % tasks resolved, higher is better | snapshot qwen3.8-max-0902; max effort; Claude Code harness | 27 % | Third party | — | 2026-10-25 | Terminal-Bench 4.0 leaderboard (Harbor Hub) |
| Text Arena Arena score, higher is better | Overall, style control on; no effort suffix | 1,483 | Third party | 2026-10-22 | 2026-10-25 | Text Arena leaderboard (Arena) |
Leaderboard versions (for example 1.0.5 and 1.0.6) are not comparable. Some results use fallback routing for refused steps: for "Claude Fable 5.1 (with Opus 5 Fallback)", Opus 5 handled 260 of 657 tasks. Artificial Analysis runs a separate leaderboard, AutomationBench-AA, which uses a guardrail-adjusted metric; its scores are not comparable with Zapier's. The partial_credit metric is for diagnostics only. The leaderboard shows no per-row evaluation dates.
There is no maintained public leaderboard (the project site says it is under construction), so almost all current numbers are self-reported by providers. Results with tools such as a code interpreter are much higher than without: Alibaba reports 83.7% without and 90.2% with tools for Qwen3.8-27B. Top models now exceed the human baseline, so differences at the top are small and may reflect label noise. Descriptive-question scores are a different metric and must not be recorded here.
The official leaderboard uses mini-swe-agent for all models and shows whole-number percentages with margins of about ±1 to ±6 points. Providers often report scores from their own scaffolds or effort settings; DeepSeek reports 65.5% to 74.2% for the same model depending on the scaffold. DeepSWE v1 scores are not comparable with v1.1. With only 113 tasks, small differences are within noise.
FrontierMath was developed with funding from OpenAI, which has exclusive access to a subset of the problems. Scores from v1 and from Tier 4 (a separate 43-problem expansion set) are not comparable with Tiers 1-3 (v2). The best models score about 94%, so the benchmark separates mid-size models better than it separates frontier models. Epoch's numbers come from its own harness (Python tool, 1M-token limit), which can differ from providers' internal setups. Margins are about ±1.4 to ±2.6 points.
Elo is a relative rating: values change as models are added and the scale is re-anchored, so always store the date a rating was read. For example, Anthropic's launch page gives 1846 for Claude Opus 5.5, while the leaderboard on 2026-10-12 shows 1866 (Max, Default Fallback). Earlier versions (Google cites "GDPVal-AA v2") are not comparable. Judging is done by an LLM, not by human experts. Anthropic models are listed with "Default Fallback", meaning refused steps are routed to a fallback model. AA-Briefcase and GDP.pdf are separate evaluations.
Results differ a lot by setting: with tools versus without tools (Anthropic reports 45.9% without tools and 57.4% with tools for Claude Haiku 5.5), and the full set versus the text-only subset. Providers use different judge models and harnesses (Scale uses o3-mini; Alibaba states GPT-4o). Derived sets such as HLE-Verified (a third-party revision with 1,811 scored items), HLE-Rolling and HLE-Diamond are different item sets and are not comparable. The questions are public, so contamination is possible, and community reviews have reported flawed items.
Numbers are only comparable when release, task set (full or offline), metric (binary or partial), step budget (150, 300 or 500) and agent approach (standard or batch tool calls) all match. Providers usually quote partial scores, which are much higher than binary completion. Claude Opus 5 at max effort on v2.1 scores 44.33% binary and 77.67% partial. The verified leaderboard is run by the maintainers and covers few current models, so most numbers are self-reported. The original OSWorld and OSWorld-Verified (369 tasks) are a different benchmark and are not recorded here.
Scores depend heavily on the agent harness (for example Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build or mini-SWE-agent) and on the reasoning effort, so the same model appears several times on the leaderboard. Leaderboard rows are often submitted by the organisation that builds the agent. Providers' own runs can differ from the leaderboard: Anthropic reports 66.4% for Claude Opus 5.5 at max effort, while the leaderboard lists 64.8% ± 3.1%. Versions 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 and Artificial Analysis' "Terminal-Bench Hard" use different task sets and are not comparable with 4.0. Margins are about ±3 points.
Scores measure voter preference, which can be influenced by answer style and length. The leaderboard offers a style-control adjustment, so record which view was used. Scores shift with every update, so a value is only meaningful together with its leaderboard date. Entries marked "Preliminary" or with few votes have wide confidence intervals. The same model can appear several times with different reasoning-effort suffixes (for example -high or -max). Category views (Coding, Math, Creative Writing and others) are different rankings from Overall.
One row per result, without rank numbers: each result was measured under its own setting (effort level, harness, tools, test version), as stated by the source, and scores compare only within the same setting. Self-reported results come from the provider and have not been reproduced independently.
Rankings
- #6 of 39 in Best AI for business as of 2026-10-26
- #9 of 14 in Best AI for research as of 2026-10-26
- #13 of 42 in Best AI API as of 2026-10-26
- #17 of 20 in Best AI for coding as of 2026-10-27
- #17 of 26 in Best AI for students as of 2026-10-26
Derived from our published ranking snapshots; each ranking explains its criteria and weights.
Compare Qwen3.8-Max
Guides
- AI token pricing explained: input, output, cached and batch rates
- Reasoning models explained: thinking modes, effort and cost
- Multimodal AI explained: image, audio, video and file inputs, and what they cost
- Context windows explained: limits, long-context pricing and recall
- How to choose an AI model: a practical decision framework
About Qwen3.8-Max
qwen3.8-max is the flagship of the Qwen3.8 series, described by Alibaba Cloud as a 2.4-trillion-parameter MoE model aimed at coding, office productivity and long-horizon agentic tasks. It accepts text, images and video and returns text; thinking mode is enabled by default and can be switched off per request. The official Hugging Face model card states that Qwen3.8-Max is based on the open-weights Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B, adding vision input, non-thinking mode, a 1M default context and built-in tools. The snapshot qwen3.8-max-0902 (alias qwen3.8-max-2026-09-02) is listed with the same limits and price.
Strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
- 1,000,000-token context window, up to 131,072 output tokens and up to 262,144 chain-of-thought tokens
- Text, image and video input (video up to 2 hours / 2 GB); PDF understanding supported in Singapore
- Hybrid thinking mode plus function calling, structured output, built-in tools (e.g. web search, code interpreter) and explicit/implicit context caching
Weaknesses
- Highest per-token list price in this line-up, shared with qwen3.8-2.4t-a95b (USD 2 input / USD 6 output per 1M tokens)
- Batch inference is not supported in the Singapore region
- No audio input (audio understanding is offered by qwen3.8-omni-flash)
Sources
- qwen3.8-max Model Info - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio
- Model lifecycle and updates - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio
- Visual understanding - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio
- PDF file understanding via VL model - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio
- Use deep thinking models via API | Model Studio - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio
- Web search with large models - Alibaba Cloud Model Studio
- Terminal-Bench 4.0 leaderboard (Harbor Hub)
- Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork (Qwen blog, 2026-08-03)
- DeepSWE leaderboard (Datacurve)
- FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2) leaderboard (Epoch AI)
- GDPval-AA v2.1 Leaderboard (Artificial Analysis)
- Text Arena leaderboard (Arena)
Last verified Page updated 2026-10-26