Qwen3 30B A3B API Pricing
Alibaba (Qwen) · context window 131K · prices updated 2026-09-15
Where Qwen3 30B A3B sits on price
At $0.5 per million output tokens, Qwen3 30B A3B is a mid tier model — 4.2× cheaper than the median output price of $2.08, which puts it cheaper than 79% and pricier than 21% of the models we track. It sits 16th cheapest of the 53 Alibaba (Qwen) models we track. Output costs 4.2× input, the usual spread — trim both, starting with the answer length.
What real workloads cost on Qwen3 30B A3B
These three workloads are the ones teams actually run on a mid-priced model — a $0.5/1M model is not bought for the same job as one ten times the price.
| Workload | Per request | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win. | $0.0013 | $19.50 |
| Document pipeline — 10K docs/day (3K in / 500 out) Batch-friendly: no user waiting, so a ~50% batch discount usually applies. | $0.0006 | $183 |
| Small app — 1K requests/day (500 in / 150 out) The baseline most side projects actually run at. | $0.0001 | $4.05 |
Model your exact traffic in the API cost calculator — it preloads Qwen3 30B A3B with caching and batch options.
Qwen3 30B A3B price history
Alibaba (Qwen) last cut Qwen3 30B A3B's output price on Aug 23, 2026 (-4% per output token), from $0.13/$0.52 to $0.12/$0.5 per 1M in/out. That is one of 2 repricings in the 44 days we have tracked it — worth knowing before you hard-code today's rate into a budget.
| Date | Input /1M | Output /1M | Output change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2, 2026 (tracking began) | $0.12 | $0.5 | — |
| Aug 16, 2026 | $0.13 | $0.52 | +4% |
| Aug 23, 2026 | $0.12 | $0.5 | -4% |
Change-points from our daily price snapshots (tracking since Aug 2, 2026; intraday moves between snapshots are not captured).
Qwen3 30B A3B vs GLM 5.3 Flash
The closest-priced alternative from another vendor is GLM 5.3 Flash (Z.ai (GLM)) — priced within a rounding error on output, with $0.03 more per million input tokens. When two models land this close on price, the decision is quality on your own workload, not the price sheet: run 50 real requests through both and compare.
See GLM 5.3 Flash pricing →Cheaper alternatives
More Alibaba (Qwen) models
Frequently asked questions
› How much does the Qwen3 30B A3B API cost?
Qwen3 30B A3B costs $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.5 per million output tokens and no discounted cached-input tier. That works out to roughly 2,000,000 output tokens per dollar.
› What does the support chatbot workload cost on Qwen3 30B A3B?
Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) costs about $0.0013 per request and $19.50 per month on Qwen3 30B A3B. Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win.
› What does it cost to fill Qwen3 30B A3B's 131K context window?
Sending 131K of input in a single request costs $0.0157 at $0.12 per million tokens — before any output. There is no cached-input tier on this model, so every repeat of that context is billed at full price. This is why large context windows are cheap to advertise and expensive to actually use.
› Is Qwen3 30B A3B worth the price?
Qwen3 30B A3B sits in the middle of the market (16 of 53 by price within Alibaba (Qwen)). The honest test is a routing experiment: send the same 200 real requests to this model and to a tier below, and compare failure rate against the price gap — most teams find a majority of traffic never needed the pricier model.