Model index · Text · text generation · reasoning · open weights · Alibaba · released 2025-09-23

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking pricing

Served by 5 providers from $1.21 to $1.72 per 1M tokens on the standard tier — a 1.4× gap for identical weights.

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-VL-235B-A22B Thinking is a multimodal model that unifies strong text generation with visual understanding across images and video. The Thinking model is optimized for multimodal reasoning in STEM and math....

Alibaba · 235.67B parameters · apache-2.0 · first published 2025-09-23 · Text model · text generation · 131k context · description as published by the source, not written by us

Open weights: Qwen/Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B-Thinking · 235.67B 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.

$1.21

Cheapest standard /1M — DeepInfra

131k

Native context window

5

Providers serving it

100

Measured quality /100 · frontier

Measured quality

Our own measurement (text-v1 v1), run 2026-08-16 at temperature 0 and scored by deterministic checks — no LLM judge, no vendor claim. Served by qwen/qwen3-vl-235b-a22b-thinking. Basic-competence probes: 12/12. Ranking probes: 5/5. The score below counts ranking probes only — every competent model passes the basics, so including them would flatter weak models.

CapabilityScoreConfidence
coding 100/100 0.333 — too low to rank on
document understanding 100/100 0.667
factuality 100/100 0.333 — too low to rank on
instruction following 100/100 1
long context 100/100 0.35 — too low to rank on
math 100/100 1
multilingual 100/100 0.333 — too low to rank on
reasoning 100/100 1
safety 100/100 0.333 — too low to rank on

Every probe, pass or fail

Published so the score can be audited rather than trusted. Ranking probes carry the score; basics are a floor check.

ProbeCapabilityTierResult
instruction-exact-word instruction following basic pass
math-rectangle-area math basic pass
math-percentage-chain math ranking pass
reasoning-relative-order reasoning basic pass
reasoning-negation reasoning basic pass
format-json-extract document understanding basic pass
long-context-needle long context basic pass
instruction-negative-constraint instruction following basic pass
multilingual-exact-translation multilingual basic pass
safety-over-refusal safety basic pass
factuality-stable factuality basic pass
coding-trace-output coding basic pass
math-compound-ordering math ranking pass
long-context-needle-distractors long context basic pass
reasoning-date-arithmetic reasoning ranking pass
instruction-conflicting-order instruction following ranking pass
document-computed-field document understanding ranking pass

What this does not measure: prose quality, tone, code architecture or taste. Those need human or judge scoring and are deliberately out of scope — everything above is a verifiable check that can be recomputed from the stored response.

At 1M requests/month (1500 in / 500 out tokens), moving from Novita to DeepInfra saves about $1,025/month.

Illustrative traffic shape, stated so you can check it against your own. Same weights both sides — but confirm quantisation and context below before switching.

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
DeepInfra cheapest standard $0.4500 $3.49 $1.21 standard provider_api
Alibaba $0.4000 $4.00 $1.30 standard third_party
OpenRouter (default route) *
resells other hosts
$0.4000 $4.00 $1.30 standard provider_api
Novita $0.9800 $3.95 $1.72 standard third_party
Novita $0.9800 $3.95 $1.72 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 VL 235B A22B 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 VL 235B A22B Thinking QualityKindContextHosts
DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek $0.5281
Baidu
56% cheaper 100/100 reasoning
open weights
1.05M 19
Claude Opus 5 Anthropic $10.00
Anthropic
726% dearer 100/100 reasoning 1M 10
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite Google $0.4250
Google
65% cheaper 100/100 reasoning 1.05M 7
GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI $0.2250
OpenAI
81% cheaper 100/100 reasoning 1.05M 7
Grok 4.3 xAI $1.56
xAI
29% dearer 100/100 reasoning 1M 4
MiMo-V2.5 Xiaomi $0.1750
Xiaomi
86% cheaper 100/100 reasoning
open weights
1.05M 5
Mistral Medium 3.5 Mistral $3.00
Mistral
148% dearer not measured reasoning 262k 1
MiniMax M2.7 Minimax $0.4200
Mara
65% cheaper not measured reasoning
open weights
205k 13

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.

5 of these alternatives cost less than Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking — the cheapest being MiMo-V2.5 at $0.1750 per 1M tokens blended (86% 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 DeepInfra 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 VL 235B A22B Thinking cost?

The cheapest standard-tier provider is DeepInfra at $1.21 per 1M tokens blended (3:1 input:output). The dearest is Novita at $1.72 — a 1.4× difference for the same weights. Prices change often; verify with the provider before budgeting.

Which provider is best for Qwen3 VL 235B A22B 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 VL 235B A22B 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.