GPT-3.5 Turbo vs Qwen 2.5 Max: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare GPT-3.5 Turbo and Qwen 2.5 Max across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-3.5 TurboQwen 2.5 Max
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.500$0.160
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.50$0.640
Context Window
16K
128K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
8,192
Arena ELO
1,120
1,260
Coding ELO
1,100
1,250
TTFT (ms)
150
240
Tokens/sec
100
80
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use GPT-3.5 Turbo

GPT-3.5 Turbo excels at cost-effective, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Widely used

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose
When to Use Qwen 2.5 Max

Qwen 2.5 Max excels at coding, general-purpose, cost-sensitive, open-source tasks.

Strengths:

  • Extremely competitive pricing
  • Strong coding and general capabilities
  • Open-source model available
  • Good multilingual support including Chinese

Best for:

codinggeneral-purposecost-sensitiveopen-source

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