If money is no object, then nothing else is worth considering if it isn't Codex 5.4/Opus 4.7/SOTA. But for many to most people, value Vs. relative quality are huge levers.
Even many people on a Claude subscription aren't choosing or able to choose Opus 4.7 because of those cost/usage pressures. Often using Sonnet or an older opus, because of the value Vs. quality curve.
Also us weirdos with local model uses. But your point stands.
Unfortunately, like with the release of Qwen3.6-Plus, this model also isn’t released for local use. From the linked article: “Qwen3.6-Max-Preview is the hosted proprietary model available via Alibaba Cloud Model Studio”
The Max series was never available for local use, though. So this is expected.
Sure, not plus or max. I just use their lesser moe ones locally (that would never come close to massive sota models) all the time.
Cost may or may not be a factor in my choice of model, but knowing the capabilities and knowing they will remain consistent, reliable, and available over time is always a dominant consideration. Lately, Anthropic in particular has not been great at that.
anecdotally the quality of output isn't significantly different, the speed seems to be what you're really paying for, and since the alternative is free I'll stick to local.
What are the best models to run locally?
right now Gemma 4 and Qwen 3.6, I've found the latter to have the slight edge but your results may vary.
Codex 5.4 is not out?
Codex subscription is very generous at pro tiers