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Alibaba (Qwen) · language model

Qwen3.8 Flash: pricing, context and benchmarks

Qwen3.8 Flash is a language model from Alibaba (Qwen) released on August 26, 2026. It costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.47 per million output tokens, with a 1M-token context window. No independent score has been published for it so far.

Low costOpen weightsReasoningTool calling

What you need to know about Qwen3.8 Flash

Qwen3.8 Flash was released by Alibaba (Qwen) (China) on August 26, 2026. It accepts text, images, and video as input and produces text. Its context window reaches 1,000,000 tokens, larger than 77 % of the models in the registry, and it can write up to 131,072 tokens in one go.

It is a recent model: real-world feedback and independent scores are still scarce.

Qwen3.8 Flash pricing

On OpenRouter, Qwen3.8 Flash costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.47 per million output tokens. Counting three tokens read for every token written, its average price is $0.23 per million, more expensive than 23 % of paid models (3.3 times cheaper than the median of $0.76).

A concrete example: a task that sends 2,000 tokens (about 1,500 words) and receives a 500-token answer costs $0.0005. At 1,000 tasks a day, budget $16 a month. The price calculator redoes this with your own volumes.

Tokens already sent and cached are billed at $0.016 per million.

Performance and benchmarks

Epoch AI does not yet publish a capabilities index for Qwen3.8 Flash. We therefore show no made-up performance rating: only price, context and features count towards its score.

Features, privacy and local use

  • It supports tool calling, so it can drive an AI agent, call APIs or MCP servers.
  • It can answer in an enforced JSON format (structured outputs).
  • It is a reasoning model: it "thinks" before answering, which helps on hard tasks but uses more output tokens.

Its weights are open and downloadable from Hugging Face: you can run it on your own machines without sending your data to a third party.

Other Alibaba (Qwen) models

Average price per million tokens (3 input for 1 output).
ModelReleasedAvg. priceECI
Qwen3.8 Max PrimeSep 23, 2026$6—
Qwen3.8 Omni FlashSep 21, 2026$0.23—
Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Sep 3, 2026$3155.1
Qwen3.8 27BAug 14, 2026$0.78151.7
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95BAug 12, 2026$3—
Qwen3.7 FlashJul 27, 2026$0.06144.1
Qwen3.7 PlusJun 3, 2026$0.56147
Qwen3.7 MaxMay 21, 2026$2.21154

Verdict

Qwen3.8 Flash scores 83/100 on our grid, which only uses published figures.

Strengths

  • Low price: cheaper than 77 % of paid models.
  • Very large context (1M tokens): long documents or a whole codebase fit in one request.
  • Open weights: self-hostable, your data stays with you.
  • Agent-ready: tool calling and structured JSON output.

Limitations

  • No independent score published: performance cannot be verified.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Qwen3.8 Flash cost?

$0.15 per million input tokens and $0.47 per million output tokens on OpenRouter (checked October 25, 2026). A task with 2,000 tokens read and 500 written costs $0.0005.

How big is Qwen3.8 Flash's context window?

1,000,000 tokens, roughly 750,000 words, with a maximum of 131,072 output tokens.

Can Qwen3.8 Flash run locally?

Yes, its weights are published.

Is Qwen3.8 Flash suitable for an AI agent?

Technically yes: it supports tool calling and structured outputs. Then check its cost for your volume.

What are the alternatives to Qwen3.8 Flash?

The closest models on price and performance are Claude Haiku 5.5, Mercury 3, and GPT-4.1 Nano.

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Neutrality. No affiliate links. No vendor pays to be reviewed, rated or ranked. Reviews are directed by François Chollet, neutral and factual, and every data point is dated and sourced. How we score