Qwen3.7-Max vs. Qwen3.7-Plus: Cost and Quality on Three Real Tasks

One-sentence takeaway

Using the same prompt, medians from five runs, and a senior reviewer, Ofox compared Max and Plus: Max had small quality/speed advantages on pure text and long-horizon migration, while Plus cost about five times less across the three tasks and supported visual input.

Test environment

• Interface: Ofox OpenAI-compatible API.

• Configuration: Same prompt, temperature 0.2; each task was run 5 times and the median was reported; quality was scored 1–5 by a senior reviewer.

• Tasks: Asynchronous refactoring of a 1,200-line Python service; debugging a flaky test from a screenshot + stack trace; and a 1,000-step autonomous CLI migration from Postgres 14 to 16.

• Long-horizon task: Each model ran unattended for 4 hours, below the 35-hour ceiling mentioned on the page.

Inputs/configuration

The article publishes task descriptions, input/output tokens, duration, tool calls, error recovery, and cost, but not the complete code repository, per-round tool traces, random seeds, reviewer rubric details, or raw API responses. Its method and budget order of magnitude can be replicated, but it cannot be recalculated line by line.

Results data

Task 1: Asynchronous refactoring of a 1,200-line Python service

Task 2: Debugging a flaky test from a screenshot + stack trace

Task 3: 1,000-step Postgres migration Agent

Conclusions

• In the pure-text async refactor, both models scored 4/5; Max's median time was about 14% faster, but the task cost was about 5 times that of Plus.

• The visual debugging task is not “cheaper Max vs. more expensive Plus”: Max could not accept the screenshot, while Plus found the cause at 5/5 and Max scored 2/5 and guessed the wrong location.

• In the long-horizon migration, Max completed 100% with 5/5 error recovery, versus Plus at 96% and 4/5; for irreversible production migrations, a small quality difference may be worth paying for, while Plus has a cost advantage in rollback-capable staging.

• The same article's pricing table lists Max input/output at $2.50/$7.50 and Plus at $0.40/$1.60; actual quotes should follow the current Alibaba Cloud page.

Limitations

• Ofox provides both comparison APIs and promotional services, creating a platform interest; the task set has only 3 tasks and cannot represent every coding/Agent workflow.

• The senior reviewer, sample code, and raw traces are not public, so quality scores may contain subjective elements.

• Plus's visual advantage depends on image input through the API and the task design; Max's text path is not strictly equivalent to the visual path.

• A 4-hour run and 342–351 tool calls do not prove a 35-hour ceiling or stability for arbitrary Agents.

Reproduction steps

1. Use the same dated snapshot, prompt, temperature 0.2, and tool permissions to run Max and Plus separately through your own API/gateway.

2. Repeat each task at least 5 times, saving input/output tokens, TTFT, wall-clock time, tool calls, error recovery, and the final diff.

3. Have two reviewers who do not know the model identity score the results with a fixed rubric, and independently record whether the actual root cause was found and whether the tests passed.

4. Separate image-input tasks from pure-text tasks; do not misclassify “the model cannot see the image” as weak reasoning ability.

5. Calculate the cost of each result that passes without manual rework, then decide whether Max's quality premium is justified.

Source excerpt or observation (brief excerpt for compliance only)

The article's cost conclusion is “Plus wins on text-only cost,” but the 100% vs. 96% long-horizon migration result is a reminder to route irreversible tasks according to the cost of failure.