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Llama 4 Maverick vs Qwen 3 32B

A straight cost comparison of Llama 4 Maverick (Meta (Llama)) and Qwen 3 32B (Alibaba (Qwen)), per 1,000,000 tokens, verified November 2026.

Rate-by-rate comparison

For per-token metrics, the lower number wins. For context window and batch support, the higher or broader option wins. A dash means the provider does not publish that rate: a missing cache-write fee means writes are not billed per token, while a missing cached-input rate means cache hits bill at the full input rate.

Blended cost: 1M input + 250K output

Ten workloads, two bills

The same two models, priced across ten workloads that differ only in their input:output ratio. Nothing else changes — no retries, no system prompt, no middleware.

Llama 4 Maverick wins 0 of 10, Qwen 3 32B wins 10 of 10. The winner is set by the token mix, not by the headline rate.

Where the two bills cross over

Qwen 3 32B is cheaper on both sides of the mix: $0.15 vs $0.27 per million input tokens, and $0.60 vs $0.85 per million output. No input:output ratio reverses that, so on price alone the other model never becomes the better choice — it has to win on context, latency or output quality.

Cost at four scales

The same support-chat workload (4K input, 600 output per request) at four monthly volumes.

What caching does to each bill

Caching only helps the part of the prompt that repeats. This is the support-chat workload (1,000 requests, 4,000 input tokens each) with an increasing share of that prompt served from a warm cache, written once on the first request.

Both models publish a cached-read rate, so the discount is comparable: Llama 4 Maverick reads cache at $0.027 per million, Qwen 3 32B at $0.015.

Which one should you pick?

Llama 4 Maverick wins on none of the ten workloads above, while Qwen 3 32B wins on classification, data extraction, support chat, code review, summarisation, agent loop, translation, long-document qa, cached rag, nightly batch.

Beyond price, the two differ on input rate ($0.27 vs $0.15); output rate ($0.85 vs $0.60); cached-input rate ($0.027 vs $0.015); context window (1,000,000 vs 131,072).

Batch mode is available on Llama 4 Maverick and Qwen 3 32B, which halves the nightly job. Both publish cached-input discounts, so a stable system prompt is worth caching on either.

FAQ

Is Llama 4 Maverick cheaper than Qwen 3 32B?

On a blended 1M-input-plus-250K-output workload, Qwen 3 32B is cheaper by 38% ($0.30 vs $0.483). The gap changes for cache-heavy prompts and for batch jobs, as the workload table shows.

Which handles longer prompts, Llama 4 Maverick or Qwen 3 32B?

Qwen 3 32B has the larger context window (1,000,000 vs 131,072 tokens). Neither model publishes a long-context surcharge.

Do both models support prompt caching?

Llama 4 Maverick bills cached reads at $0.027 per 1M; Qwen 3 32B at $0.015.

Related comparisons

• Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 4 Scout
• Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 3.3 70B
• Qwen 3 32B vs Qwen 3 8B
• All Meta (Llama) pricing
• All Alibaba (Qwen) pricing

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