The closest alternative to Qwen3 Max is Ling-2.6-flash — comparable intelligence (26.2 vs 26.1); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $0.780/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Ling-2.6-flash is the closest alternative to Qwen3 Max, with an Intelligence Index of 26.2 (Qwen3 Max scores 26.1) at $0.010 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $0.780 for Qwen3 Max, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Qwen3 Max — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.