Qwen3.8 27B vs Qwen3.8
Qwen3.8 27B is from Alibaba, released August 17, 2026. Qwen3.8 is from Alibaba, released August 3, 2026.
- LMArena Elo1438 vs 1482. Qwen3.8 is 3.1% ahead on LMArena Elo.
- Input per 1M$0.50 vs $2. Qwen3.8 27B costs 75% less per million input tokens.
- Output per 1M$3 vs $6. Qwen3.8 27B costs 50% less per million output tokens.
- Context window1M vs 262k. Qwen3.8 27B takes 282% more context in one request.
Prices are the vendors’ published API rates; Elo is LMArena’s text board. Each figure is dated on its model page.
Interactive Comparison
Loading chart...
$0.50 / $3 per million tokens | $2 / $6 per million tokens | |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | ||
| Developer | Alibaba | Alibaba |
| Released | Aug 2026 | Aug 2026 |
| Status | — | GA |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | Open weights under a licence named "qwen3.8-max" - NOT Apache 2.0 (the Qwen3.8-27B sibling is Apache 2.0, which is a common source of confusion) |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes - Qwen/Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B and an FP8 checkpoint published 12 Aug 2026 |
| Cost | ||
| Blended $/1M tokensinput × 0.75 + output × 0.25 | $1.125 / 1M tokens | $3.000 / 1M tokens |
| Input price | $0.500 / 1M tokens | $2.000 / 1M tokens |
| Output price | $3.000 / 1M tokens | $6.000 / 1M tokens |
| Cached input | — | Not documented |
| Batch discount | — | Not documented |
| Free tier | — | Not documented |
| Capacity | ||
| Context window | 1M tokens | 262k native (extensible to ~1.01M) |
| Max output | — | 128k tokens |
| Long-context surcharge | — | Not documented |
| Capability | ||
| Vision in | Yes | No - text-only. Alibaba’s model card states "Multimodal inputs are not supported". The multimodal sibling is Qwen3.8-27B (Apache 2.0), which is tagged Image-Text-to-Text and does accept images and video. |
| Audio in | — | No |
| Function calling | — | Yes |
| Structured output | — | Yes |
| Extended reasoning | — | Yes - thinking mode is required for all interactions, not optional |
| Web search | — | Not documented |
| Code execution | — | Not documented |
| Access | ||
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Chat app | — | Yes |
| Cloud marketplaces | — | Alibaba Cloud Model Studio |
| Fine-tuning | — | Yes - open weights permit it |
| Measured quality | ||
| LMArena Elo | 1438 (checked Oct 2026) | 1482 (checked Oct 2026) |
| LMArena rank | Rank 100 | Rank 24 |
| Elo per dollarLMArena Elo ÷ blended $/1M tokens | 1278 | 494 |
