Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking API Pricing
Alibaba (Qwen) · context window 131K · prices updated 2026-09-20
Where Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking sits on price
At $4.00 per million output tokens, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking is a mid tier model — 2.0× the median output price of $2.00, which puts it cheaper than 36% and pricier than 64% of the models we track. It sits 48th cheapest of the 53 Alibaba (Qwen) models we track. Output costs 10.0× more than input here, so anything that makes the model write less — tighter instructions, structured output, lower max_tokens — moves the bill more than trimming the prompt.
What real workloads cost on Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking
These three workloads are the ones teams actually run on a mid-priced model — a $4.00/1M 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. | $0.0076 | $114 |
| Document pipeline — 10K docs/day (3K in / 500 out) Batch-friendly: no user waiting, so a ~50% batch discount usually applies. | $0.0032 | $960 |
| Small app — 1K requests/day (500 in / 150 out) The baseline most side projects actually run at. | $0.0008 | $24.00 |
Model your exact traffic in the API cost calculator — it preloads Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking with caching and batch options.
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking price history
Alibaba (Qwen) last raised Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking's output price on Aug 7, 2026 (+1% per output token), from $0.98/$3.95 to $0.4/$4.00 per 1M in/out. That is one of 2 repricings in the 49 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) | $0.4 | $4.00 | — |
| Aug 3, 2026 | $0.98 | $3.95 | -1% |
| Aug 7, 2026 | $0.4 | $4.00 | +1% |
Change-points from our daily price snapshots (tracking since Aug 2, 2026; intraday moves between snapshots are not captured).
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking vs Kimi K2.6
The closest-priced alternative from another vendor is Kimi K2.6 (Moonshot (Kimi)) — priced within a rounding error on output, with $0.55 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 Kimi K2.6 pricing →Cheaper alternatives
More Alibaba (Qwen) models
Frequently asked questions
› How much does the Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking API cost?
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking costs $0.4 per million input tokens and $4.00 per million output tokens and no discounted cached-input tier. That works out to roughly 250,000 output tokens per dollar.
› What does the support chatbot workload cost on Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking?
Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) costs about $0.0076 per request and $114 per month on Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking. Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win.
› What does it cost to fill Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking's 131K context window?
Sending 131K of input in a single request costs $0.0524 at $0.4 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 VL 235B A22B Thinking worth the price?
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking sits in the middle of the market (48 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.