Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Qwen3-Max
Side-by-side specs, pricing and capabilities. Both models run on Clade under one subscription, so you can switch between them in the same conversation.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 comes from Anthropic and Qwen3-Max from Alibaba. The practical difference for most people is context, price, and which input types each one accepts.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 holds more in a single conversation — 1M tokens against 256K — which matters for long documents and large codebases.
Qwen3-Max is the cheaper of the two on input tokens at $1.20 / 1M tokens.
| Specification | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3-Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba |
| Model ID | claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929 | qwen3-max |
| Context window | 1M | 256K |
| Max output | 64K | 80K |
| Input price | $3.00 / 1M tokens | $1.20 / 1M tokens |
| Output price | $15.00 / 1M tokens | $6.00 / 1M tokens |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2025-01 | — |
| Input types | text, image, file | text |
| Output types | text | text |
| Plan | Premium | Premium |
Which should you use?
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 when…
- You need the larger context window — 1M against 256K.
- You need image and file input, which the other model does not accept.
Pick Qwen3-Max when…
- Cost matters: input runs at $1.20 / 1M tokens versus $3.00 / 1M tokens.
- You want longer single responses — up to 80K output tokens.
Related comparisons
Try both on Clade
You do not have to choose. One Clade subscription gives you Claude Sonnet 4.5, Qwen3-Max, and every other model on the platform.