GPT-5.1 Medium vs Qwen3.8 Max: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
GPT-5.1 Medium is developed by OpenAI, while Qwen3.8 Max comes from Alibaba. GPT-5.1 Medium was released in November 2025, and Qwen3.8 Max followed 9 months later in August 2026. Qwen3.8 Max has a published size of about 2.4 trillion parameters; OpenAI has not disclosed the parameter count of GPT-5.1 Medium.
We have 1 benchmark result for GPT-5.1 Medium and 42 benchmark results for Qwen3.8 Max, but they were measured on different benchmarks, so there is no like-for-like scoreboard.
GPT-5.1 Medium is the cheaper API at $1 per million input tokens and $4 per million output tokens, roughly 3 times cheaper than Qwen3.8 Max at $2.50 and $6.25. Qwen3.8 Max takes the larger context window at 1M tokens, compared with 256K for GPT-5.1 Medium. Both accept text and images as input.
| Characteristic | GPT-5.1 Medium | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Company | OpenAI | Alibaba |
| Release Date | November 11, 2025 | August 2, 2026 |
| Parameters | — | 2.4T |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Context (input) | 256K | 1.0M |
| Context (output) | 64K | 131K |
| Input Price / 1M | $1.00 | $2.50 |
| Output Price / 1M | $4.00 | $6.25 |
| Average Score | 98.0% | 71.0% |
Verdict
Qwen3.8 Max leads in 2 out of 4 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: GPT-5.1 Medium — 1.0, Qwen3.8 Max — 0.7.
GPT-5.1 Medium is 1.8x cheaper: input $1.00/1M vs $2.50/1M tokens.
Qwen3.8 Max supports a larger context: 1M vs 256K tokens.
Qwen3.8 Max is newer: released 8/2/2026 vs 11/11/2025.
More About These Models
Related Comparisons
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — GPT-5.1 Medium or Qwen3.8 Max?
Which model is cheaper — GPT-5.1 Medium or Qwen3.8 Max?
Which has a larger context window — GPT-5.1 Medium or Qwen3.8 Max?
The GPT-5.1 Medium and Qwen3.8 Max comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the GPT-5.1 Medium or Qwen3.8 Max page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.