CL-SN55 941 —
GPT-61S 885 —
GPT-56T 861 —
GPT-6S 825 —
CL-OP55X 818 -0.1%
MUSE-SPK 793 —
QWEN-38X 779 —
GPT-6A 778 —
CL-OP5H 711 -0.1%
CL-OP5X 709 -0.1%
KIMI-K3X 699 -0.1%
CL-OP46H 694 -0.1%
CL-FAB5H 692 -0.1%
CL-OP55H 692 -0.1%
CL-OP47H 683 -0.1%
GEM-37FH 648 -0.2%
GEM-38FH 633 -0.2%
INKL 531 —
CL-OP47 529 -0.2%
GPT-56S 529 -5.9%
GEM-3P 493 —
CL-OP46 488 —
CL-OP48 481 —
GEM-31P 453 -0.2%
GPT-6L 436 —
CL-SN55 941 —
GPT-61S 885 —
GPT-56T 861 —
GPT-6S 825 —
CL-OP55X 818 -0.1%
MUSE-SPK 793 —
QWEN-38X 779 —
GPT-6A 778 —
CL-OP5H 711 -0.1%
CL-OP5X 709 -0.1%
KIMI-K3X 699 -0.1%
CL-OP46H 694 -0.1%
CL-FAB5H 692 -0.1%
CL-OP55H 692 -0.1%
CL-OP47H 683 -0.1%
GEM-37FH 648 -0.2%
GEM-38FH 633 -0.2%
INKL 531 —
CL-OP47 529 -0.2%
GPT-56S 529 -5.9%
GEM-3P 493 —
CL-OP46 488 —
CL-OP48 481 —
GEM-31P 453 -0.2%
GPT-6L 436 —
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Qwen3.8 Flash Ships with 1M Context at $0.16 Input — Cheaper on Output Than GPT-4.1 Mini

Alibaba released Qwen3.8 Flash on August 26 on OpenRouter and compatible APIs, pricing it at $0.16 per million input tokens and $0.47 per million output tokens. The model carries a 1M-token context window and accepts text, image, and video as input.

The release sits alongside Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, which Alibaba flagged as an architecture preview for the Qwen4 lineage — a 125B MoE with sparse attention not yet available via standard APIs. Qwen3.8 Flash is the production model landing in customer hands now.

Pricing context

GPT-4.1 mini costs $0.10 input and $1.40 output per million tokens. At $0.47 output, Qwen3.8 Flash undercuts it by roughly 3x on the dimension that dominates inference costs — output tokens typically account for the larger share of bills in production.

GPT-5.6 Luna, OpenAI’s recent sub-frontier release and the current cheapest option with frontier-generation capabilities, sits at $0.20 input and $1.20 output — still 2.5x more expensive on output than Qwen3.8 Flash.

The pricing places Qwen3.8 Flash in competition with Gemini 3.7 Flash High, which topped LiveBench’s cost-per-task rankings at the frontier this month at around $0.35 per successful task.

Capability profile

Alibaba positions the model across: coding assistance, agentic workflows, visual understanding, document and codebase analysis, desktop interaction, chart analysis, and long-video analysis. The 1M context window makes it viable for full codebase ingestion and long-document work without chunking.

The Flash designation in Alibaba’s naming convention signals a smaller, faster model in the family — Qwen3.8 Max, released earlier this month, occupies the top of the range and took the top spot on Artificial Analysis’s Agentic Index, though at $1.14 per successful task versus Qwen3.8 Flash’s entry price.

Arena positioning

Arena.ai added Qwen3.8-Flash-Next to the Code Arena WebDev leaderboard on August 26 alongside the release. Scores for Qwen3.8 Flash on the Text Arena are pending; the Code Arena entry provides the first competitive signal.

Key numbers

MetricValue
Input cost$0.16 / 1M tokens
Output cost$0.47 / 1M tokens
Context window1M tokens
Input modalitiesText, image, video
Release dateAugust 26, 2026
vs. GPT-4.1 mini output3x cheaper
vs. GPT-5.6 Luna output2.5x cheaper