Qwen 3 VL 235 B A22 B Instruct vs Minimax M3: cost comparison
Prices updated 2026-11-07 · computed from live provider data
Short answer: Minimax M3 is cheaper on a
3:1 input/output blend — $0.388 per million tokens versus
$0.632, a 39% difference.
Minimax M3 offers the larger context window at 524,288 tokens, against 262,144 for Qwen 3 VL 235 B A22 B Instruct.
Head to head
| Qwen 3 VL 235 B A22 B Instruct | Minimax M3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input, per 1M tokens | $0.210 | $0.224 |
| Output, per 1M tokens | $1.90 | $0.880 |
| Blended 3:1, per 1M | $0.632 | $0.388 |
| Context window | 262,144 | 524,288 |
| Vendor | qwen | minimax |
Monthly cost at real volumes
| Workload (input / output) | Qwen 3 VL 235 B A22 B Instruct | Minimax M3 |
|---|---|---|
| 1M in / 250K out | $0.685 | $0.444 |
| 10M in / 2.5M out | $6.85 | $4.44 |
| 100M in / 25M out | $68.50 | $44.40 |
Which should you pick?
Pick Minimax M3 when you need the longer context window (524,288 vs 262,144 tokens). Pick Minimax M3 when price per token dominates your workload — high-volume classification, extraction, or batch summarisation.