DeepSeek V3.1 vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- Both cost about the same at a typical 3:1 input/output mix.
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking accepts longer prompts: 262K vs 164K tokens.
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking is the newer model (released 2025-10-06).
| DeepSeek V3.1 | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | DeepSeek | Qwen |
| Released | 2025-08-21 | 2025-10-06 |
| Input / 1M | $0.25 | $0.29 |
| Output / 1M | $0.95 | $1.00 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.13 | — |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.425 | $0.467 |
| Context | 164K | 262K |
| Max output | 33K | 236K |
| Accepts | text | text, image |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 5 | 1 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $0.95 | $1.00 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | Operational |
Cost calculator
DeepSeek V3.1
$29.25 per month$0.97 per day
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking
$32.40 per month$1.08 per day
DeepSeek V3.1 saves $3.15 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare DeepSeek V3.1 with
Compare Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking with