Qwen3.8 27B vs SpaceXAI Grok 4.20
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
- Qwen3.8 27B is 4.6× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- Grok 4.20 accepts longer prompts: 1.9M vs 1M tokens.
- Qwen3.8 27B is the newer model (released 2026-08-14).
| Qwen3.8 27B | Grok 4.20 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Qwen | SpaceXAI |
| Released | 2026-08-14 | 2026-03-31 |
| Input / 1M | $0.039 | $1.25 |
| Output / 1M | $1.25 | $2.50 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.0039 | $0.20 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.342 | $1.56 |
| Context | 1M | 1.9M |
| Max output | 66K | 1.7M |
| Accepts | text, image, video | text, image, file |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 21 | 4 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $1.25 | $2.50 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | Operational |
Cost calculator
Qwen3.8 27B
$21.09 per month$0.70 per day
Grok 4.20
$113 per month$3.75 per day
Qwen3.8 27B saves $91.41 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
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