What tools does Qwen 3 Max Thinking invoke autonomously?

The model has three integrated tools: Search (for retrieving current information), Memory (for tracking user preferences and context across turns), and Code Interpreter (for executing code to verify or compute results). It selects among them without user prompting.

How does the thinking mode differ from standard completion mode?

In thinking mode, the model generates an extended internal reasoning trace before producing its final answer. This trace is visible in the response and reflects multi-step problem decomposition, which improves accuracy on hard reasoning tasks at the cost of more output tokens.

What did the model score on Humanity's Last Exam?

With its Search tool enabled, Qwen 3 Max Thinking scored 49.8 on Humanity's Last Exam, a benchmark of ~3,000 graduate-level questions across math, science, and engineering.

Does autonomous tool use mean I can't control when tools fire?

You can't manually control which tools fire. The model selects tools as an internal reasoning step. If your application requires deterministic, manually orchestrated tool calls, the non-thinking Qwen3-Max variant with explicit function-calling schemas is a better fit.

How does the Search tool reduce hallucinations?

When Qwen 3 Max Thinking's internal confidence on a factual claim is low, it automatically triggers a search query to retrieve current information rather than generating an answer from its internal knowledge alone, which reduces the frequency of confidently stated incorrect facts.

What is the token cost model for thinking-mode responses?

Thinking-mode completions generate reasoning traces that can be substantially longer than direct answers. Output tokens from both the reasoning chain and the final response are billed.

Alibaba Cloud

Qwen 3 Max Thinking

Qwen 3 Max Thinking is Alibaba Cloud's trillion-parameter reasoning model that autonomously deploys built-in search, memory, and code interpreter tools during inference, achieving a score of 49.8 on Humanity's Last Exam with search enabled.

View API reference

Input and output price: Input $1.20, Output $6, Per 1M tokens
24h uptime: Loading AI Gateway uptime

Get API key Read the docs

import { streamText } from 'ai'

const result = streamText({
  model: 'alibaba/qwen3-max-thinking',
  prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?'
})

Read docs

Overview Playground Providers Uptime Status Throughput Latency API Similar About FAQ

Copy link to headingPlayground

Try out Qwen 3 Max Thinking by Alibaba Cloud. Usage is billed to your team at API rates. Free users (those who haven't made a payment) get $5 of credits every 30 days.

Qwen 3 Max Thinking

Copy link to headingProviders

Route requests across multiple providers. Copy a provider slug to set your preference. Visit the docs for more info. Using a provider means you agree to their terms, listed under Legal.

Provider

Context	Max Output	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

Alibaba Cloud

Legal:Terms•Privacy

256K

66K

1.0 s

55 tps

$1.20/M+2 more

$6/M+2 more

Read$0.24/M

—

01/23/2026

Getting started

Call Qwen 3 Max Thinking through AI Gateway with the AI SDK generateText and streamText functions, or through the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Messages APIs by changing the base URL. AI Gateway authenticates the request and routes it to an available provider.

Install the AI SDK (pnpm add ai dotenv), create an API key from the API Keys page, and set it as AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY in your environment. Full setup is covered in the text generation quickstart.

index.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3-max-thinking',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Top-level parameters

The same Qwen 3 Max Thinking request in each API format AI Gateway supports.

top-level-params.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3-max-thinking',
    system: 'You are a concise technical assistant.',
    prompt: 'Summarize the tradeoffs between static generation and SSR.',
    maxOutputTokens: 1024,
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Standard parameters like prompt, messages, temperature, and tools work as documented in the AI SDK docs. These are the parameters with model-specific behavior.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`model`	`string`	Yes	Model ID in the form `creator/model`, e.g. `alibaba/qwen3-max-thinking`. AI Gateway routes the request to an available provider.
`maxOutputTokens`	`number`	No	Hard cap on generated tokens. Qwen 3 Max Thinking supports up to `65,536` output tokens. Reasoning tokens count toward this limit.
`reasoning`	`'provider-default' \| 'none' \| 'minimal' \| 'low' \| 'medium' \| 'high' \| 'xhigh'`	No	Provider-agnostic reasoning effort, available in AI SDK 7 or later. Maps to the provider’s native reasoning configuration; reasoning settings under `providerOptions` take precedence when both are set. See the Reasoning section below.
`providerOptions`	`Record<string, JSONValue>`	No	AI Gateway routing options under `gateway`, plus any provider-native options under the provider’s own namespace — see the table below.

Input limits

Input	Formats	Sources	Max count	Max size	Limits
Text	—	—	—	—	Prompt and response share the 256K-token context window

Provider options

Set AI Gateway routing options under providerOptions.gateway. For provider-specific options, pass them under the provider’s namespace as documented by the AI SDK.

Learn more in the AI SDK alibaba provider docs.

provider-options.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3-max-thinking',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
    providerOptions: {
      gateway: {
        only: ['alibaba'],
      },
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

These AI Gateway routing options apply to every model. Provider-specific options pass through under the provider’s own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) exactly as documented by the AI SDK.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`providerOptions.gateway.only`	`string[]`	No	Restrict routing to these provider slugs. Requests fail over only within the listed providers.
`providerOptions.gateway.order`	`string[]`	No	Preferred provider order. Listed providers are tried first; unlisted providers remain available as fallbacks.
`providerOptions.gateway.sort`	`'cost' \| 'ttft' \| 'tps'`	No	Rank candidate providers by price, time to first token, or tokens per second instead of the default routing order.
`providerOptions.gateway.zeroDataRetention`	`boolean`	No	Route only to providers with a zero-data-retention policy for this model.

Routing across providers

AI Gateway serves the same model through multiple providers and fails over automatically. order expresses a preference while keeping every provider eligible; only is a hard allowlist — if none of the listed providers are available the request fails instead of falling back.

Options under a provider's own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) are forwarded to that provider with the request. Providers ignore option namespaces that don't apply to them, so it is safe to set provider options alongside gateway routing options.

Reasoning

AI Gateway bridges reasoning across every API format. The AI SDK exposes a provider-agnostic top-level reasoning level (none, minimal, low, medium, high, or xhigh); the Chat Completions and Responses formats take the same effort under reasoning.effort; and the Anthropic Messages format uses a native thinking token budget. Whichever you send, the gateway maps it to the target model’s native configuration, converting between effort levels and token budgets as needed. Reasoning-related settings under providerOptions take full precedence over the top-level reasoning value and are never merged. Reasoning tokens typically count toward your output-token usage, though how they’re reported and billed varies by provider.

Learn more in the AI Gateway reasoning guide.

reasoning.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3-max-thinking',
    prompt: 'Explain the Monty Hall problem step by step.',
    reasoning: 'high',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Tool calling

Expose tools the model can call. Define each tool’s inputs with a Zod schema.

tool-calling.ts

import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3-max-thinking',
    prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
    tools: {
      getWeather: tool({
        description: 'Get the current weather for a location',
        inputSchema: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
        execute: async ({ location }) => ({ location, temperatureC: 18 }),
      }),
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Copy link to headingMore models by Alibaba Cloud

Model

Context	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	Providers	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

alibaba/qwen3.8-max-0902

991K

3.9 s

50 tps

$2/M

$6/M

Read$0.25/M

Write$2.50/M

—

09/01/2026

alibaba/qwen3.8-flash

991K

1.1 s

96 tps

$0.16/M

$0.47/M

Read$0.02/M

Write$0.20/M

—

08/26/2026

alibaba/qwen3.8-27b

0.6 s

133 tps

$0.10/M

$0.40/M

Read$0.01/M

Write$0.63/M

—

08/14/2026

alibaba/qwen3.8-max

2.5 s

154 tps

$2/M

$6/M

Read$0.25/M

Write$2.50/M

—

08/02/2026

alibaba/qwen3.7-flash

991K

2.5 s

140 tps

$0.03/M+2 more

$0.13/M+2 more

Read$0.006/M

Write$0.04/M

—

07/28/2026

alibaba/qwen3.7-plus

2.0 s

58 tps

$0.40/M+1 more

$1.60/M+1 more

Read$0.08/M

Write$0.50/M

—

06/02/2026

Copy link to headingAbout Qwen 3 Max Thinking

Qwen 3 Max Thinking, released on January 23, 2026, extends the Qwen3-Max architecture with a dedicated extended reasoning mode and integrated autonomous tool use. When Qwen 3 Max Thinking encounters a question that exceeds its internal knowledge or requires computation, it independently decides whether to trigger its Search tool (for current information), Memory tool (for cross-turn context persistence), or Code Interpreter (for numerical verification and data processing), without you needing to specify which tool applies.

This autonomous tool selection is a meaningful architectural distinction. Rather than exposing tool invocation as an explicit user-facing control, Qwen 3 Max Thinking treats it as an internal reasoning step, making the interaction feel more like working with a capable assistant that knows when to check its work. The design is intended to reduce hallucination risk on factual queries by defaulting to retrieval when confidence is low, and to improve numerical accuracy by routing computations through an interpreter.

Qwen 3 Max Thinking's thinking mode exposes its reasoning chain before delivering a final answer, providing transparency into multi-step problem decomposition. On Humanity's Last Exam, a benchmark of approximately 3,000 graduate-level questions spanning mathematics, science, and engineering, Qwen 3 Max Thinking with search enabled scored 49.8, competitive with other models on the same benchmark in Alibaba Cloud's published comparisons. You can access Qwen 3 Max Thinking through AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python.

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Configuration: Thinking-mode responses can be substantially longer than standard completions, factor in output token volume when estimating per-request cost across providers.
Zero Data Retention: Zero Data Retention is available for this model. It is offered on a per-provider and model basis. See the documentation for details.
Authentication: AI Gateway authenticates requests using an API key or OIDC token. You do not need to manage provider credentials directly.

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Qwen 3 Max Thinking

Best for

STEM and engineering questions: Hard scientific, mathematical, or engineering problems that benefit from visible chain-of-thought reasoning
Search-grounded research assistance: Workflows where real-time search reduces the risk of stale or invented information
Self-correcting numerical agents: Automated agents that route calculations through a code interpreter to verify outputs
Multi-turn personalized conversations: Extended sessions where the model must remember and adapt to user preferences
Autonomous tool orchestration: Complex pipelines where the model decides which tool to invoke without explicit user prompting

Consider alternatives when

Tight token budgets: Thinking-mode responses consume substantially more output tokens than direct-answer models
Low-latency requirements: Fast completions matter more than extended reasoning, which becomes unnecessary overhead
Deterministic tool control: Autonomous tool selection may not align with strictly orchestrated pipelines that need manual control
Creative or conversational tasks: Step-by-step reasoning adds friction rather than value in these contexts

Copy link to headingConclusion

Qwen 3 Max Thinking is built for situations where getting the right answer matters more than getting it quickly: graduate-level problem solving, real-time research synthesis, and agentic pipelines that need a model capable of recognizing its own knowledge gaps. The combination of autonomous tool orchestration and transparent reasoning chains fits complex, open-ended inference tasks.

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions

What tools does Qwen 3 Max Thinking invoke autonomously?
The model has three integrated tools: Search (for retrieving current information), Memory (for tracking user preferences and context across turns), and Code Interpreter (for executing code to verify or compute results). It selects among them without user prompting.
How does the thinking mode differ from standard completion mode?
In thinking mode, the model generates an extended internal reasoning trace before producing its final answer. This trace is visible in the response and reflects multi-step problem decomposition, which improves accuracy on hard reasoning tasks at the cost of more output tokens.
What did the model score on Humanity's Last Exam?
With its Search tool enabled, Qwen 3 Max Thinking scored 49.8 on Humanity's Last Exam, a benchmark of ~3,000 graduate-level questions across math, science, and engineering.
Which SDKs are compatible with this model via AI Gateway?
You can access Qwen 3 Max Thinking through AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python.
Does autonomous tool use mean I can't control when tools fire?
You can't manually control which tools fire. The model selects tools as an internal reasoning step. If your application requires deterministic, manually orchestrated tool calls, the non-thinking Qwen3-Max variant with explicit function-calling schemas is a better fit.
How does the Search tool reduce hallucinations?
When Qwen 3 Max Thinking's internal confidence on a factual claim is low, it automatically triggers a search query to retrieve current information rather than generating an answer from its internal knowledge alone, which reduces the frequency of confidently stated incorrect facts.
What is the token cost model for thinking-mode responses?
Thinking-mode completions generate reasoning traces that can be substantially longer than direct answers. Output tokens from both the reasoning chain and the final response are billed.

Your use is subject to Alibaba Cloud's Terms & Privacy Policies.

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Qwen 3 Max Thinking

Copy link to headingPlayground

Copy link to headingProviders

Copy link to headingUptime24 hours

Copy link to headingThroughput24 hours

Copy link to headingLatency24 hours

Getting started

Top-level parameters

Input limits

Provider options

Routing across providers

Reasoning

Tool calling

Copy link to headingMore models by Alibaba Cloud

Copy link to headingAbout Qwen 3 Max Thinking

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Qwen 3 Max Thinking

Best for

Consider alternatives when

Copy link to headingConclusion

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions