Qwen3.8 Max costs $1.14 per Intelligence Index task, more than double Qwen3.7 Max ($0.53) and ~1.3x open weights leader Kimi K3 (max, $0.86). The increase is driven by more agentic turns rather than pricing: per-token prices fell from Qwen3.7 Max ($2.00/$6.00 vs $2.50/$7.50 per 1M input/output tokens), but turns per task on GDPval-AA (20% of the Intelligence Index) rose from 14 to 64
token — The chunk of text a model reads and writes in — roughly three-quarters of a word — and the unit AI usage is billed in.
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
Why it matters
Per-tokenThe chunk of text a model reads and writes in — roughly three-quarters of a word — and the unit AI usage is billed in.Full definition → price went down while real cost per task more than doubled. Anyone budgeting an AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → workload on published token rates would get this badly wrong.
