Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct

Flagship Qwen3-VL vision-language model, a 235B MoE with 22B active, built for long video understanding.

Params: 235B, 22B active
Context: 262K tokens
Max output: 66K
License: Apache 2.0

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Hosted API price

List price via Alibaba Cloud · per 1M tokens

USD

Input: $0.40 /1M
Output: $1.60 /1M
Cheapest: $0.30 / $1.50 via Novita
Hosted by: 2 providers

Hosted API pricing

How we price

Order

Providers are listed cheapest input rate first, then by output rate, a tie going to the creator's own listing. A provider that lists the model without a published rate sits at the end.

Prices

Base-tier, on-demand rates in USD per 1M tokens, converted at ECB reference rates where a provider publishes in another currency. Cached-input and batch rates show only where a provider publishes them. "Cheapest" marks the one provider with the lowest input and output pair; a tie wears no badge.

Cost

Input rate times the input tokens plus output rate times the output tokens, at the monthly volume set above the table. Cached-input, batch, long-context and reasoning-token billing are not modelled.

Transparency and funding

Affiliates: Affiliate links are marked. We may earn a commission if you click them, but commissions never affect the order.

Every provider serving Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.

Input M Output M

Every provider serving Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct, with its price per 1M input and output tokens and what the volume above would cost
Provider	Input /1M	Output /1M	Cost at 10M in + 2M out	Link
Novita Cheapest	$0.30	$1.50	$6.00	Visit website
Alibaba Cloud Creator	$0.40	$1.60	$7.20	Visit website

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-VL-235B-A22B Instruct needs about 137 GB of GPU memory at 4-bit with 32K context. The cheapest rental that fits is 8× RTX 3090 at about $1,440 a month.

That costs the same as roughly 2B tokens a month on Alibaba Cloud's API. Self-hosting is more expensive below that volume.

Single node ≤ 8

What it costs to self-host Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct at each precision: the memory it needs, the cheapest rental that holds it, that rental's month and the API volume it pays off at
Precision	Memory	Cheapest fit (32K context)(Full 262K context)	Cost /mo	Break-even vs API
4-bit INT4 / FP4	137 GB157 GB	8× RTX 3090	$1,440$2,477	2B tokens /mo4B tokens /mo
8-bit FP8 / INT8	243 GB288 GB	8× RTX A6000	$3,283$3,283	5B tokens /mo5B tokens /mo
16-bit FP16 / BF16	478 GB523 GB	8× A100	$9,850$9,850	16B tokens /mo16B 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. Pricing methodology.

Similarly priced models

The models nearest Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Models priced nearest Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct per 1M tokens, each at its cheapest provider
Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct
Qwen3-VL-Plus Alibaba Cloud	$0.4333	$0.20	$1.60	262K		−13%
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek	$0.45	$0.30	$1.20	1M		−10%
MiniMax-M2.5 MiniMax	$0.45	$0.30	$1.20	205K		−10%
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Google Cloud	$0.4583	$0.25	$1.50	1M	Jan 2025	−8%
Qwen3.6-Flash Alibaba Cloud	$0.4583	$0.25	$1.50	1M		−8%
Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct This model Alibaba Cloud	$0.50	$0.30	$1.50	262K
MiMo-V2.6-Pro Xiaomi MiMo	$0.5075	$0.435	$0.87	1M		+2%
DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek	$0.5233	$0.45	$0.89	1M		+5%
GPT-5 Mini OpenAI	$0.5417	$0.25	$2.00	400K	May 2024	+8%
DeepSeek V3 Turbo DeepSeek	$0.55	$0.40	$1.30	64K		+10%
Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Thinking Alibaba Cloud	$0.5667	$0.20	$2.40	262K		+13%

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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Capabilities

What Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct accepts and can do, as published by Alibaba Cloud.

Text Accepts and generates natural-language text.
Image Accepts images as input alongside text.
Video Accepts video as input.
Function calling Connect to external tools, APIs, and systems.
Structured output Return responses in structured formats like JSON.

Common questions

What is Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct good for?

Hours-long video, multi-image understanding, operating GUIs and reading code from screenshots. Apache 2.0 weights, on a multi-GPU node.

When is Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct not a good fit?

Audio input, and tasks that need a reasoning trace, which the Thinking sibling covers. Memory follows the full 235B parameters, not the 22B active, so self-hosting takes a multi-GPU node.

What is the cheapest way to run Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct?

Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Alibaba Cloud charges $0.40 in / $1.60 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 8x RTX 3090 at $1,440 a month, which costs the same as about 2B tokens a month on that API.

Can I self-host Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Instruct?

Yes. The weights are Apache 2.0 licensed. At 4-bit it needs about 137 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $1,440 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.