What is Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking good for?

Multi-step reasoning with a chain of thought, which Alibaba recommends for highly complex tasks. Apache 2.0 weights, the same 80B mixture of experts with 3B active, on a single high-memory GPU.

When is Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking not a good fit?

Short requests that do not need a reasoning trace, since it runs in thinking mode only. No image or video input.

What is the cheapest way to run Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking?

Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Alibaba Cloud charges $0.15 in / $1.20 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 4x RTX 4060 Ti at $317 a month, which costs the same as about 975M tokens a month on that API.

Can I self-host Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking?

Yes. The weights are Apache 2.0 licensed. At 4-bit it needs about 48 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $317 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.

Open weights · Apache 2.0

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking

Reasoning variant of Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B with chain-of-thought, on the same hybrid attention architecture of 80B total, 3B active and 512 experts.

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List price via Alibaba Cloud

Input: $0.15 / 1M tokens
Output: $1.20 / 1M tokens

2 providers

Key Specifications

Context window: 262K tokens
Max output: 66K tokens
Parameters: 80B, 3B active
Inputs: Text

Capabilities Show details: Reasoning Thinks before it answers, always on or as a switchable mode. Function calling Connect to external tools, APIs, and systems. Structured output Return responses in structured formats like JSON.

Hosted API pricing

Input tokens M Output tokens M

Provider	Input / 1M tokens	Output / 1M tokens	Cost at 10M in + 2M out
Alibaba Cloud Creator	$0.15	$1.20	$3.90	View
Lyceum	$0.15	$1.20	$3.90	View

Heads up: Base-tier, on-demand rates per 1M tokens; cached, batch and long-context tiers excluded. A provider may serve a shorter context or a quantized build than the creator's release. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.

Estimated cost to self-host

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking needs about 48 GB of GPU memory at 4-bit with 32K context. The cheapest rental that fits is 4× RTX 4060 Ti at about $317 a month.

That costs the same as roughly 975M tokens a month on Alibaba Cloud's API. Self-hosting is more expensive below that volume.

Single node ≤ 8

Precision	Memory	Cheapest fit (32K context)(Full 262K context)	Cost / mo	Break-even vs API
4-bitINT4 / FP4	48 GB72 GB	4× RTX 4060 Ti	$317$346	975M tokens / mo1B tokens / mo
8-bitFP8 / INT8	85 GB95 GB	8× RTX 3060	$346$634	1B tokens / mo2B tokens / mo
16-bitFP16 / BF16	165 GB188 GB	8× RTX 3090	$979$3,168	3B tokens / mo10B tokens / mo

Estimates based on median on-demand rates for Nvidia GPUs. Memory is weights plus KV cache for one request, using FP8 KV cache where supported and FP16/BF16 otherwise. Break-even assumes a 5:1 input-to-output ratio. No guarantee of runtime support, usable performance, or that a matching quantized build exists. How we estimate costs.

Similarly priced models

The models nearest Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Model	Blended / 1M	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Context	Cutoff	vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking
Qwen2.5-7B Instruct Alibaba Cloud	$0.30	$0.30	$0.30	33K		−8%
Qwen3-235B-A22B FP8 Alibaba Cloud	$0.30	$0.20	$0.80	33K		−8%
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B Alibaba Cloud	$0.3133	$0.17	$1.03	262K		−4%
MiniMax-M3 MiniMax	$0.3167	$0.20	$0.90	1M		−3%
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Instruct Alibaba Cloud	$0.325	$0.15	$1.20	262K		0%
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking This model Alibaba Cloud	$0.325	$0.15	$1.20	262K
Qwen-MT-Plus Alibaba Cloud	$0.3333	$0.25	$0.75	16K		+3%
Qwen2.5-VL-72B Instruct Alibaba Cloud	$0.3333	$0.25	$0.75	33K		+3%
DeepSeek V3.2 DeepSeek	$0.3417	$0.25	$0.80	131K		+5%
Qwen3.6-27B Alibaba Cloud	$0.35	$0.30	$0.60	262K		+8%
GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI	$0.3667	$0.20	$1.20	1M	Feb 2026	+13%

Prices are USD per 1M tokens at each model's cheapest listed provider. Blended is the cost of 10M input plus 2M output tokens, spread over the 12M.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking good for?: Multi-step reasoning with a chain of thought, which Alibaba recommends for highly complex tasks. Apache 2.0 weights, the same 80B mixture of experts with 3B active, on a single high-memory GPU.
When is Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking not a good fit?: Short requests that do not need a reasoning trace, since it runs in thinking mode only. No image or video input.
What is the cheapest way to run Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking?: Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Alibaba Cloud charges $0.15 in / $1.20 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 4x RTX 4060 Ti at $317 a month, which costs the same as about 975M tokens a month on that API.
Can I self-host Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking?: Yes. The weights are Apache 2.0 licensed. At 4-bit it needs about 48 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $317 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.

More from Alibaba Cloud

Model	Context	Input / 1M	Output / 1M
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Instruct Open weights	262K	$0.15	$1.20
Qwen2.5-VL-72B Instruct Open weights	33K	$0.25	$0.75
Qwen-MT-Plus	16K	$0.25	$0.75
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B Open weights	262K	$0.17	$1.03
Qwen3.6-27B Open weights	262K	$0.30	$0.60
Qwen2.5-7B Instruct Open weights	33K	$0.30	$0.30
Qwen3-235B-A22B FP8 Open weights	33K	$0.20	$0.80
Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct Open weights	262K	$0.20	$0.70