Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct

An efficient 30B MoE vision-language model with 3B active, offering strong multimodal capability at low inference cost.

Params: 31.1B, 3B 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: $0.20 /1M
Output: $0.80 /1M
Cheapest: $0.20 / $0.70 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-30B-A3B Instruct, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.

Input M Output M

Every provider serving Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B 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	$0.20	$0.70	$3.40	Visit website
Alibaba Cloud Creator	$0.20	$0.80	$3.60	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-30B-A3B Instruct needs about 21 GB of GPU memory at 4-bit with 32K context. The cheapest rental that fits is 2× RTX 4060 Ti at about $187 a month.

That costs the same as roughly 624M 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-30B-A3B 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	21 GB32 GB	2× RTX 4060 Ti	$187$374	624M tokens /mo1B tokens /mo
8-bit FP8 / INT8	36 GB46 GB	4× RTX 3060	$230$374	768M tokens /mo1B tokens /mo
16-bit FP16 / BF16	67 GB90 GB	8× RTX 3060	$461$749	2B tokens /mo2B 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-30B-A3B Instruct by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Models priced nearest Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct per 1M tokens, each at its cheapest provider
Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct
Qwen3.8-27B Alibaba Cloud	$0.225	$0.17	$0.50	262K		−21%
Qwen3-Coder-Next Alibaba Cloud	$0.2283	$0.078	$0.98	262K		−19%
Llama 4 Scout Meta	$0.24	$0.16	$0.64	10M	Aug 2024	−15%
Qwen3.5-122B-A10B Alibaba Cloud	$0.2487	$0.115	$0.917	262K		−12%
Llama 4 Maverick Meta	$0.2827	$0.20	$0.696	1M	Aug 2024	0%
Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct This model Alibaba Cloud	$0.2833	$0.20	$0.70	262K
Muse Glimmer 30B Meta	$0.30	$0.20	$0.80	131K	Jan 2026	+6%
Qwen2.5-7B Instruct Alibaba Cloud	$0.30	$0.30	$0.30	33K		+6%
Qwen3-235B-A22B FP8 Alibaba Cloud	$0.30	$0.20	$0.80	33K		+6%
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B Alibaba Cloud	$0.3153	$0.172	$1.032	262K		+11%
MiniMax-M3 MiniMax	$0.3167	$0.20	$0.90	1M		+12%

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-30B-A3B 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-30B-A3B Instruct good for?

Image and video understanding on a single consumer GPU. Apache 2.0 weights, a 30B mixture of experts with 3B active.

When is Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct not a good fit?

Audio input, image output and built-in web search, none of which it supports. Long chain-of-thought reasoning is the job of the Thinking sibling.

What is the cheapest way to run Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct?

Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Alibaba Cloud charges $0.20 in / $0.80 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 2x RTX 4060 Ti at $187 a month, which costs the same as about 624M tokens a month on that API.

Can I self-host Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct?

Yes. The weights are Apache 2.0 licensed. At 4-bit it needs about 21 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $187 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.