Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Thinking

Reasoning variant of Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B with extended chain-of-thought for complex visual and multimodal reasoning.

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

Visit Alibaba Cloud Compare vs other LLMs →

Hosted API price

List price via Alibaba Cloud · per 1M tokens

USD

Input: $0.40 /1M
Output: $4.00 /1M
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 Thinking, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.

Input M Output M

Every provider serving Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Thinking, 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
Alibaba Cloud Creator Cheapest	$0.40	$4.00	$12.00	Visit website
Novita	$0.98	$3.95	$17.70	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 Thinking 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 1B 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 Thinking 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	1B tokens /mo2B tokens /mo
8-bit FP8 / INT8	243 GB288 GB	8× RTX A6000	$3,283$3,283	3B tokens /mo3B tokens /mo
16-bit FP16 / BF16	478 GB523 GB	8× A100	$9,850$9,850	10B 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. Pricing methodology.

Similarly priced models

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

Models priced nearest Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Thinking per 1M tokens, each at its cheapest provider
Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Thinking
GLM-5.2 Z.AI	$0.95	$0.70	$2.20	1M		−5%
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B Nvidia	$0.99	$0.66	$2.64	1M	Sep 2025	−1%
DeepSeek R1 DeepSeek	$1.00	$0.70	$2.50	128K		0%
DeepSeek R1 Turbo DeepSeek	$1.00	$0.70	$2.50	64K		0%
Llama 3 70B Meta	$1.00	$0.65	$2.75	8K	Dec 2023	0%
Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Thinking This model Alibaba Cloud	$1.00	$0.40	$4.00	262K
Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI	$1.0333	$0.60	$3.20	262K		+3%
Grok Build 0.1 xAI	$1.1667	$1.00	$2.00	256K		+17%
Command A+ Cohere	$1.20	$0.80	$3.20	128K		+20%
GLM-5.1 Z.AI	$1.2377	$0.825	$3.301	205K		+24%
Gemini 3.6 Flash Google Cloud	$1.25	$0.75	$3.75	1M	Mar 2026	+25%

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.

Runpod

Spin Up a GPU in Seconds - No Setup Required

Deploy AI Models Globally in 30+ Regions

Scale from 0 to 1000 GPUs on Demand

PyTorch, Tensorflow & Docker Ready

Learn more

Capabilities

What Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B Thinking 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.
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.

Common questions

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

Visual reasoning with a long chain of thought over images and video: operating GUIs, spatial reasoning and STEM problems. Apache 2.0 weights, on a multi-GPU node.

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

Cost-sensitive volume work: it sits near the top of Alibaba's price range. No audio input, no built-in web search, though a host or your own tool loop can add one, and self-hosting takes a multi-GPU node.

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

Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Alibaba Cloud charges $0.40 in / $4.00 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 8x RTX 3090 at $1,440 a month, which costs the same as about 1B tokens a month on that API.

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

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.