Qwen3.8 Max
Qwen · released Aug 3, 2026
- Type
- Closed
- Input
- None held
- Output
- None held
- Cached
- None held
We don't hold a list price for this model yet · hosted only — we have no record of published weights
Our take
Written Sep 29, 2026Qwen3.8 Max is a hosted-only model released in August 2026, with no download listed and no licence terms disclosed. Its strongest measured showing is on web-app building tasks, where it places 6th of 95 on Arena Code (WebDev) as of 25 Sep 2026, while tool use inside an agent loop is a clear weak spot.
Reach for it when you are building or prototyping web applications, or for creative writing and general chat, where it places 12th of 168 on Arena Creative Writing as of 25 Sep 2026. It also takes images and video alongside text, so a screenshot or clip does not have to be described in words first. Skip it if you need reliable tool calling inside an agent loop, or if you need disclosed licence terms before you build on it.
The case for it
- Places 6th of 95 on Arena Code (WebDev) as of 25 Sep 2026, a board scored from human votes on web-app building tasks, so it is the one to start with if you are prototyping a web app.
- Places 12th of 168 on Arena Creative Writing and 17th of 168 on Arena Text (overall) as of 25 Sep 2026, both boards recording which answer people preferred rather than whether it was correct.
- LiveBench Mathematics scores 91.31% on competition and olympiad maths tasks, so maths-heavy work is a reasonable place to trial it.
- Text, image and video go into the same request, so a screenshot or a clip does not have to be described in words first.
The case against it
- Places 48th of 55 on Arena Agent · Tool use as of 25 Sep 2026, a board measuring whether the model calls the right tool and does not invent one, so keep it out of agent loops that depend on tool calling.
- Coding is uneven: 6th of 95 on Arena Code (WebDev) as of 25 Sep 2026 but 26th of 168 on Arena Coding as of 25 Sep 2026 and 43rd of 58 on LiveBench Coding as of 25 Jun 2026, so set-piece code generation is weaker than web-app building.
- No licence terms are disclosed, so what you may do with its output is unverified.
How good is it?
A closed text model for everyday questions, drafting and coding, though it is weaker at calling tools.
- answering everyday questionsArena Text (overall) · 17th of 168
- drafting and editing textArena Creative Writing · 12th of 168
- writing and completing codeArena Coding · 26th of 168
- calling tools to carry out requestsArena Agent · Tool use · 48th of 55
EverydayGeneral questions and everyday reasoning
Arena Text (overall)17th of 168 · 1479
CodingWriting and fixing code on its own
Arena Coding26th of 168 · 1520
AgenticPlanning, calling tools, staying on task
Arena Agent18th of 55 · 0.028
WritingDrafting and rewriting prose
Arena Creative Writing12th of 168 · 1467
Placings on Arena's agent boards, from live sessions people ran themselves. A model can lead on one of these and sit mid-field on the others.
Boards this model appears on that none of the ratings above are built on.
Every published score for this model20 scoresEvery figure we hold, from 20 boards, with who ran it and a link to the source — including the boards no rating above is built on.
Where to rent it
Prices checked 4 hours ago — each listing carries its own date.
Novita AI, direct
Cheapest of the 3 listings we can compare like for like — at 1M of context, out of 4 in the table below. One cheaper row there is outside that comparison: a different context length.
- per 1M tokens
- $2.00 in / $6.00 out
- Context served
- 1M
- Throughput
- Not measured
| Provider | In / out per 1M tokens | Context | Throughput | Trains on prompts | Logs prompts | Zero retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepInfraDirect | $1.65 / $4.95checked 4 hours ago | 256K | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| OpenRouterOpenRouter's own listing | $2.00 / $6.00checked 4 hours ago | 1M | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Novita AIDirect | $2.00 / $6.00checked 4 hours ago | 1M | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Alibaba CloudThrough OpenRouter | $2.00 / $6.00checked 4 hours ago | 1M131K max reply | 34 tok/s | No | Yesunknown period | Unknown |
DeepInfra
OpenRouterAcross the 4 listings we hold: 1 says it does not train on prompts, 0 say they do and 3 do not say. 0 appear in the zero-retention registry we check; the rest are unknown to us.
What each host's API supports
From the parameter list each endpoint publishes. Streaming is omitted: nothing we hold reports it, for any model.
| Provider | Tool calling | JSON output | Strict schema |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepInfraDirect | |||
| OpenRouterOpenRouter's own listing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Novita AIDirect | |||
| Alibaba CloudThrough OpenRouter | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Tool calling: 2 of 4 listings say yes, 2 publish no parameter list. JSON output: 2 of 4 listings say yes, 2 publish no parameter list. Strict schema: 2 of 4 listings say yes, 2 publish no parameter list.
Models people weigh against Qwen3.8 Max
When we formed this view
Recent changes
Each date is the day we first saw the change, or the day the maker announced it.
What we do not know about this model yet
- 2 of 4 listings publish no parameter list, so what their API accepts is unknown to us.
- Nothing we hold says whether an endpoint streams, so we do not show it either way.
- 3 of 4 listings do not say whether they train on prompts.
- We don't hold a list price for this model yet — the gap is ours, not the lab's.
- We hold no batch or off-peak rate for any of its listings.
Licence and identifiers
What the licence allowsWe hold no licence record for this model. Inside are the identifiers you need to pull it — its Hugging Face repo where we have one, our slug and a machine-readable card.
Licence
We hold no licence record for this model, and no record of published weights either — so we can neither summarise its terms nor point you at the weights.
Identifiers
- Takes in, gives back
- Text, images and video in, text out
- Catalogue slug
- qwen-qwen3-8-max