Grok 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.
Grok 4.5 comes from xAI and Qwen3-Max from Alibaba. The practical difference for most people is context, price, and which input types each one accepts.
Grok 4.5 holds more in a single conversation — 500K 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 | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3-Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Alibaba |
| Model ID | grok-4.5 | qwen3-max |
| Context window | 500K | 256K |
| Max output | — | 80K |
| Input price | $2.00 / 1M tokens | $1.20 / 1M tokens |
| Output price | $6.00 / 1M tokens | $6.00 / 1M tokens |
| Knowledge cutoff | — | — |
| Input types | text, image | text |
| Output types | text | text |
| Plan | Premium | Premium |
Which should you use?
Pick Grok 4.5 when…
- You need the larger context window — 500K against 256K.
- You need image input, which the other model does not accept.
Pick Qwen3-Max when…
- Cost matters: input runs at $1.20 / 1M tokens versus $2.00 / 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 Grok 4.5, Qwen3-Max, and every other model on the platform.