DALL-E 3 vs Qwen (Alibaba)

Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.

DALL-E 3

A
8.0/10

OpenAI's image generator built into ChatGPT -- the easiest way to create AI images

Our Pick

Qwen (Alibaba)

A
8.8/10

Alibaba's open-weights family -- Qwen3.5, Qwen3-Coder-Next, Qwen3-VL, Qwen3-Max. Apache 2.0 flagship sizes.

CategoryDALL-E 3Qwen (Alibaba)
Ease of Use9.07.0
Output Quality8.09.0
Value8.010.0
Features7.09.0
Overall8.08.8

Pricing Comparison

FeatureDALL-E 3Qwen (Alibaba)
Free TierYesYes
Starting Price$0$0

Benchmark Head-to-Head

Qwen3.5-397B MoE benchmarks — DALL-E 3 has no published benchmarks

BenchmarkScore
MMLU-Pro83.5%
GPQA Diamond78.2%
AIME 202587%
HumanEval92.5%
SWE-Bench Verified69.4%

Which Should You Pick?

Pick DALL-E 3 if...

  • Easier to use (9 vs 7)

Anyone who wants quick, easy AI image generation without learning a new tool. Great for non-designers who just need images.

Visit DALL-E 3

Pick Qwen (Alibaba) if...

  • Higher output quality (9 vs 8)
  • Better value for money (10/10)
  • More features (9 vs 7)

Developers who want frontier-tier open weights with Apache 2.0 licensing. Qwen3-Coder-Next is arguably the best local coding model; Qwen3.5-397B is a top-3 open generalist.

Visit Qwen (Alibaba)

Our Verdict

Qwen (Alibaba) edges out DALL-E 3 with a 8.8 vs 8.0 overall score. Both are solid picks, but Qwen (Alibaba) has the advantage in output quality.