Qwen3.8 Max vs Trinity Large Thinking
Which is better for the money: Qwen3.8 Max by Alibaba or Trinity Large Thinking by Arcee AI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-09-09.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max scores 29.4 points higher (40.3 vs 10.9) but costs 6.1× as much to run the benchmark ($3172 vs $518; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max when you need intelligence above 10.9, and Trinity Large Thinking when 10.9 is enough.
| Metric | Qwen3.8 Max | Trinity Large Thinking | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.3 | 10.9 | −73.0% Trinity Large Thinking is 73.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,172.37 | $518.07 | −83.7% Trinity Large Thinking is 83.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 65.84s | 8.78s | −86.7% Trinity Large Thinking is 86.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $0.25 / $0.90 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Trinity Large Thinking vs Qwen3.8 Max: 73.0% less intelligence, 83.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 86.7% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Qwen3.8 Max is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Astra (high) scores 51.00 for $2917.
- Trinity Large Thinking is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GLM-5.3-Flash scores 41.90 for $280.
Qwen3.8 MaxTrinity Large ThinkingToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/qwen3-8-max/trinity-large-thinking · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/qwen3-8-max/trinity-large-thinking?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill