Qwen3.5-397B-A17B

The largest Qwen3.5 open-weight model, a 397B MoE with 17B active, and the backbone behind Qwen3.5-Plus, aimed at reasoning and coding.

Params: 397B, 17B active
Context: 262K tokens
Max output: 66K
Released: Feb 2026
License: Apache 2.0

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Hosted API price

List price via Alibaba Cloud · per 1M tokens

USD

Input: $0.60 /1M
Output: $3.60 /1M
Cheapest: $0.172 / $1.032 via EmpirioLabs AI
Hosted by: 6 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 Qwen3.5-397B-A17B, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.

Input M Output M

Every provider serving Qwen3.5-397B-A17B, with its price per 1M input and output tokens and what the volume above would cost
Provider	Input /1M	Output /1M	Cached input /1M	Cost at 10M in + 2M out	Link
EmpirioLabs AI Cheapest	$0.172	$1.032		$3.78	Visit website
DigitalOcean	$0.55	$3.50	$0.111	$12.50	Visit website
Alibaba Cloud Creator	$0.60	$3.60		$13.20	Visit website
Lyceum	$0.60	$3.60		$13.20	Visit website
Novita	$0.60	$3.60		$13.20	Visit website
Together AI	$0.60	$3.60	$0.35	$13.20	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

Qwen3.5-397B-A17B needs about 221 GB of GPU memory at 4-bit with 32K context. The cheapest rental that fits is 8× RTX A6000 at about $3,283 a month.

That costs the same as roughly 3B 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 Qwen3.5-397B-A17B 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	221 GB228 GB	8× RTX A6000	$3,283$3,283	3B tokens /mo3B tokens /mo
8-bit FP8 / INT8	400 GB407 GB	8× A100	$9,850$9,850	9B tokens /mo9B tokens /mo
16-bit FP16 / BF16	797 GB804 GB	4× B300	$22,723$22,723	21B tokens /mo21B 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 Qwen3.5-397B-A17B by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Models priced nearest Qwen3.5-397B-A17B per 1M tokens, each at its cheapest provider
Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
Llama 4 Maverick Meta	$0.2827	$0.20	$0.696	1M	Aug 2024	−10%
Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B Instruct Alibaba Cloud	$0.2833	$0.20	$0.70	262K		−10%
Muse Glimmer 30B Meta	$0.30	$0.20	$0.80	131K	Jan 2026	−5%
Qwen2.5-7B Instruct Alibaba Cloud	$0.30	$0.30	$0.30	33K		−5%
Qwen3-235B-A22B FP8 Alibaba Cloud	$0.30	$0.20	$0.80	33K		−5%
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B This model Alibaba Cloud	$0.3153	$0.172	$1.032	262K
MiniMax-M3 MiniMax	$0.3167	$0.20	$0.90	1M		0%
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Instruct Alibaba Cloud	$0.325	$0.15	$1.20	262K		+3%
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B Thinking Alibaba Cloud	$0.325	$0.15	$1.20	262K		+3%
Qwen-MT-Plus Alibaba Cloud	$0.3333	$0.25	$0.75	16K		+6%
Qwen2.5-VL-72B Instruct Alibaba Cloud	$0.3333	$0.25	$0.75	33K		+6%

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.

Thunder Compute

RTX A6000 from $0.35, A100 from $1.09, per GPU per hour

Billed per minute, no commitment, no minimums

One click into VS Code or Cursor, no SSH setup

See live pricing

Capabilities

What Qwen3.5-397B-A17B 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.
Code execution Write and execute code in a sandboxed environment.
MCP Connect to services via Model Context Protocol.

Common questions

What is Qwen3.5-397B-A17B good for?

Reasoning and coding over text, image and video, at the heavy end of the open Qwen3.5 checkpoints and the backbone of Qwen3.5-Plus. Apache 2.0 weights, on a multi-GPU node.

When is Qwen3.5-397B-A17B not a good fit?

Self-hosting on modest hardware: memory follows the full 397B parameters, not the 17B active. No audio input or image output, and no built-in web search, which the hosted Qwen3.5-Plus adds.

What is the cheapest way to run Qwen3.5-397B-A17B?

Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Alibaba Cloud charges $0.60 in / $3.60 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 8x RTX A6000 at $3,283 a month, which costs the same as about 3B tokens a month on that API.

Can I self-host Qwen3.5-397B-A17B?

Yes. The weights are Apache 2.0 licensed. At 4-bit it needs about 221 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $3,283 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.