Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902): accuracy, speed and price

• Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is more accurate: 75.0% against 57.5% on the same 80 questions, a 17.5-point gap that is statistically significant.
• Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 1.4× cheaper per question as billed ($0.011 vs $0.015), reasoning tokens included.
• Output speed is similar (44 vs 46 tokens per second).
• Qwen3.8 Max (0902) starts answering sooner: 1.2 s to the first token, against 3.1 s for Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B.

Which should you choose?

Choose Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B for open weights you can run yourself and more hosts to choose from on OpenRouter (5 against 1). Choose Qwen3.8 Max (0902) for the most accurate answers of the two, the lower cost per correct answer ($0.015 against $0.026) and a quicker first token. The widest subject gap is in law: Qwen3.8 Max (0902) answered 4 of 6 correctly, Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B 2 of 6. With so few questions per subject, treat this as a lead to test on your own prompts, not a result.

Accuracy gap -17.5 points (z = -2.34). We call a winner only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.