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18FrontierProvisional score

Qwen 3.8-Max

Qwen 3.8-Max

Alibaba's flagship, and since August its weights are published too.

Updated

Qwen 3.8-Max preview

The read

3.8-Max is the top of Alibaba's line, and in August the company reversed course and published its weights as a 2.4-trillion-parameter sparse model. It sits in the top group on both independent leaderboards, covers more languages than almost anything else here, and a stable API snapshot from September ended the preview churn. The licence is permissive for most users but requires a separate agreement from large companies selling it as a service.

Where it shines

  • Broadest language coverage of any frontier model
  • Weights published as a 2.4-trillion-parameter sparse model
  • API priced well below Western flagships

Worth knowing first

  • Large companies selling it as a service need a separate licence
  • The open weights are text only and always reason before answering

Index score

85.1

Provisional. This score is read from the product's public capability, not from the one-prompt rebuild the fully reviewed entries went through, so treat it as a placing rather than a verdict.

Craft88
Speed78
Control86
Value80
Rank
18 of 73
Builds
LLMs
Category
Frontier
Output
Published weights under its own licence, plus an API
Pricing
Free tier
Best for
Multilingual frontier work, hosted or on your own hardware

Scores are our own editorial judgement, weighted craft 55, speed 10, control 15 and value 20.