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Qwen3.8 Max vs DeepSeek V4 Pro API Cost

Qwen3.8 Max at $2/$6 against DeepSeek V4 Pro at $1.32/$3.96 per million tokens: the two leading Chinese model families on price.

Updated · By Niraj Kumar · 6 sources

Models

Each request

Count text inCount text in
tokens

System prompt, conversation history, documents and tool definitions are all resent on every call.

tokens

The visible answer.

Count tokens from a prompt or JSON payloadShow

Plain text, OpenAI Chat or Responses JSON, or Anthropic Messages JSON. A final assistant message or a response body counts as output. Counted in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Loading the tokenizer…

Counts use OpenAI's o200k tokenizer, so they are exact for GPT-6 and GPT-5 models, plus a few tokens of message framing. Other providers' tokenizers count the same text differently and do not publish a conversion factor; Anthropic says Claude models from 4.7 on produce about 30% more tokens than earlier Claude models. For an exact count on another model, paste one of its API responses: the usage it reports is shown above.

tokens

Thinking tokens are billed as output. Leave at 0 for models or settings that do not reason.

Volume

PricePrice

30,000 requests over 30 days.

Discounts

%
0%100%

The share of input that repeats exactly at the start of every request, such as a fixed system prompt. The prompt caching calculator prices cache writes and expiry in detail.

Batch APIBatch API
Cheaper for this workloadDeepSeek V4 Pro34% less, saving $91.80 a month
Qwen3.8 Max
$270.00 a month
$0.009 a request · 13th cheapest of 24
DeepSeek V4 Pro
$178.20 a month
$0.00594 a request · 11th cheapest of 24
At 10× the volume
$918.00 a month apart
Cheapest listed model
Claude Haiku 5.5
$16.50 a month
Side by side
MeasureQwen3.8 MaxDeepSeek V4 Pro
Input, per 1M tokens$2$1.32
Cache hit, per 1M tokens$2$0.044
Output, per 1M tokens$6$3.96
Context window1M tokens1M tokens
Max outputNot published384K tokens
Batch discountNoneNone
Long-context surchargeNoneNone
Input cost a month$180.00$118.80
Output cost a month$90.00$59.40
Every model on this workload, per month3,000 tokens in, 500 out, 1,000 a day. Hover or focus a row for rates.
  1. 1Claude Haiku 5.5Anthropic$16.50
  2. 2GPT-6 LunaOpenAI$16.50
  3. 3Qwen3.8 FlashAlibaba$20.55
  4. 4GPT-5.6 LunaOpenAI$36.00
  5. 5DeepSeek V4.1 FlashDeepSeek$45.00
  6. 6Qwen3.7 PlusAlibaba$60.00
  7. 7Gemini 3.5 Flash-LiteGoogle$64.50
  8. 8Gemini 3.8 FlashGoogle$123.75
  9. 9Grok 4.3xAI$150.00
  10. 10Claude Haiku 4.5Anthropic$165.00
  11. 11DeepSeek V4 ProDeepSeek$178.20
  12. 12Grok 4.7xAI$270.00
  13. 13Qwen3.8 MaxAlibaba$270.00
  14. 14Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic$330.00
  15. 15Claude Sonnet 5Anthropic$330.00
  16. 16GPT-6.1 SolOpenAI$330.00
  17. 17GPT-6 SolOpenAI$330.00
  18. 18GPT-5.6 TerraOpenAI$360.00
  19. 19Gemini 3.1 ProGoogle$360.00
  20. 20Claude Opus 5.5Anthropic$660.00
  21. 21GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI$660.00
  22. 22Claude Opus 5Anthropic$825.00
  23. 23Claude Fable 5.1Anthropic$1,650
  24. 24GPT-6 AstraOpenAI$1,650

How the Qwen3.8 Max vs DeepSeek V4 Pro API Cost works

cost = (fresh input × input rate + cached input × cache rate + (output + reasoning) × output rate) ÷ 1,000,000

This page uses the same method as the LLM API Cost Calculator, which explains each term and assumption in full.

Worked example

A chat feature sending 3,000 input tokens and getting 500 back, 1,000 times a day, priced on both models with no caching.

  1. 1Qwen3.8 Max: 3,000 × $2 + 500 × $6, ÷ 1,000,000 = $0.009 a request, $270.00 a month
  2. 2DeepSeek V4 Pro: 3,000 × $1.32 + 500 × $3.96, ÷ 1,000,000 = $0.00594 a request, $178.20 a month
  3. 3Difference: $91.80 a month

DeepSeek V4 Pro is $91.80 a month cheaper for this workload, 34% less.

Frequently asked questions

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.8 Max or DeepSeek V4 Pro?

At standard list rates, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 34% cheaper than Qwen3.8 Max on a typical chat request (3,000 tokens in, 500 out); DeepSeek V4 Pro is 34% cheaper than Qwen3.8 Max on output-heavy generation (500 in, 2,000 out); and DeepSeek V4 Pro is 87% cheaper than Qwen3.8 Max on a large cached prompt (20,000 in, 90% cached, 500 out). Qwen3.8 Max charges $2 input and $6 output per million tokens; DeepSeek V4 Pro charges $1.32 and $3.96.

Why does Qwen3.8 Max look so expensive on cached prompts?

Because Alibaba does not publish its cache rate. Its pricing page says Qwen3.8 Max cache hits are billed at a rate shown only in the Model Studio console, so this calculator prices cached input at the full $2 per million tokens. DeepSeek V4 Pro publishes $0.044. Uncached, DeepSeek is about a third cheaper at peak rates and two-thirds cheaper off-peak.

Sources

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