Model index · Text · text generation · reasoning · open weights · Alibaba · released 2025-09-11

Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking pricing

Served by 4 providers from $0.4125 to $0.4125 per 1M tokens on the standard tier.

A reasoning model — the headline price is not the whole bill

This model thinks before it answers, and those thinking tokens are billed at the output rate while never appearing in the response. A request can therefore cost several times what the per-1M figure suggests, and the multiplier depends on your prompts rather than on anything we can publish. Compare it against other reasoning models — the alternatives below are ordered to put those first.

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is a reasoning-first chat model in the Qwen3-Next line that outputs structured “thinking” traces by default. It’s designed for hard multi-step problems; math proofs, code synthesis/debugging, logic, and agentic...

Alibaba · 81.32B parameters · apache-2.0 · first published 2025-09-11 · Text model · text generation · 262k context · description as published by the source, not written by us

Open weights: Qwen/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking · 81.32B parameters counted from the weight files · licence apache-2.0 · 0.0M downloads in the last 30 days . Parameter count and licence come from the public weights registry, not from a seller — and the download figure exists only for models published this way, so it is not a market-wide popularity measure.

$0.4125

Cheapest standard /1M — Alibaba

262k

Native context window

4

Providers serving it

n/a

Not scoreable via this route

We could not score this model — a limit of our harness, not a verdict

Tokens were billed but the visible content came back empty for most probes: the answer went to the model's internal reasoning channel, which our deterministic scorers cannot read. That is a gap in how we call it, not evidence the model is weak, and it is common on reasoning-first models. We say so rather than scoring it zero — a zero would read as "cheap and weak", which we have no basis to claim.

Every provider and service tier

Standard on-demand rows first, cheapest of each group first. Tiers are not interchangeable — see the note below the table.

Provider In /1M Out /1M Blended /1M Tier Region Source
Google cheapest standard $0.1500 $1.20 $0.4125 standard third_party
Nebius $0.1500 $1.20 $0.4125 standard third_party
Alibaba $0.1500 $1.20 $0.4125 standard third_party
OpenRouter (default route) *
resells other hosts
$0.1500 $1.20 $0.4125 standard provider_api

* OpenRouter chooses a host for each request, and the figure above is what its default choice costs — not a fixed rate for this model. Selecting a specific host through the same account costs whatever that host charges, which is why this row can sit above or below the hosts listed beside it. Token rates are passed through from the underlying provider with no markup, so the per-1M price above is what that host charges directly — OpenRouter's own charge sits on funding instead: 5.5% (min $0.80) by Stripe or 5% by Coinbase to buy credits, 5% of the equivalent spend if you bring your own provider key. So budget about 5% above the rate shown unless you already hold credit. Fee schedule.

Compare Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking with alternatives

One model per vendor, ordered by how prominent the vendor is and how many independent providers serve the model — hosts only carry what customers ask for, so that is a real demand signal. This is not traffic or popularity data, which we do not have. Every alternative below does the same job — text generation — because a price comparison between a generator and, say, an upscaler is arithmetic rather than advice. Prices on both sides are standard on-demand rates, so the comparison is like for like — a discounted batch or flex rate is never shown against another model’s standard rate.

AlternativeVendor $/1M vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking QualityKindContextHosts
Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic $2.00
Anthropic
385% dearer 60/100 reasoning 200k 8
Mistral Small 4 Mistral $0.2625
Mistral
36% cheaper 40/100 reasoning 262k 2
Kimi K2.5 MoonshotAI $0.7875
DigitalOcean
91% dearer 75/100 reasoning
open weights
262k 14
MiniMax M2.7 Minimax $0.4200
Mara
2% dearer not measured reasoning
open weights
205k 13
MiMo-V2.5-Pro Xiaomi $0.5438
Xiaomi
32% dearer not measured reasoning
open weights
1.05M 7
Nemotron 3 Ultra NVIDIA $0.9250
DeepInfra
124% dearer not measured reasoning
open weights
1M 4
Gemma 4 31B Google $0.1475
OpenInference
64% cheaper not measured reasoning
open weights
262k 24
gpt-oss-120b OpenAI $0.0650
OpenRouter (default route)
84% cheaper not measured reasoning
open weights
131k 24

Prices are the cheapest host for each model, blended at a 3:1 input:output ratio. "Quality" is our own probe suite where we have run it — see what it measures. A cheaper alternative is only a real saving if it also passes on the capability your workload needs.

3 of these alternatives cost less than Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking — the cheapest being gpt-oss-120b at $0.0650 per 1M tokens blended (84% cheaper).

Cheaper is not automatically better: check the quality column, and confirm the context window and capabilities your workload depends on before switching.

Before you switch

Identical weights do not guarantee identical output. Check that the cheaper host serves the model at full precision rather than a quantised copy, that its context window matches what you need, and that its rate limits carry your peak traffic. A cheaper host that cannot take your throughput is not cheaper — it is an outage.

Move to Google without a rewrite

VernaOne fronts every provider on this page with one API, so switching host is a config change — with automatic fallback if quality or latency regresses.

Try VernaOne free →

Frequently asked

How much does Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking cost?

The cheapest standard-tier provider is Google at $0.4125 per 1M tokens blended (3:1 input:output). Prices change often; verify with the provider before budgeting.

Which provider is best for Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking?

Cheapest is not automatically best. Compare quantisation (a lossy copy of the weights changes output), the context window each host actually serves, and rate limits. Where a provider serves less context than the model's native window we flag it in the table above.

Can I switch providers for Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking without changing code?

Yes, if you route through an abstraction. VernaOne exposes one API across every provider listed here, so switching host is a config change and you keep automatic fallback if the new one degrades.

← All models · Generated catalog of AI models and every provider that serves them, with normalised prices in USD per 1,000,000 tokens. Blended prices assume a 3:1 input:output ratio.