Qwen 3 VL 8 B Instruct vs Particle 1: cost comparison
Prices updated 2026-10-30 · computed from live provider data
Short answer: Qwen 3 VL 8 B Instruct is cheaper on a
3:1 input/output blend — $0.375 per million tokens versus
$0.438, a 14% difference.
Particle 1 offers the larger context window at 1,048,576 tokens, against 262,144 for Qwen 3 VL 8 B Instruct.
Head to head
| Qwen 3 VL 8 B Instruct | Particle 1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input, per 1M tokens | $0.250 | $0.250 |
| Output, per 1M tokens | $0.750 | $1.00 |
| Blended 3:1, per 1M | $0.375 | $0.438 |
| Context window | 262,144 | 1,048,576 |
| Vendor | qwen | particle-ai |
Monthly cost at real volumes
| Workload (input / output) | Qwen 3 VL 8 B Instruct | Particle 1 |
|---|---|---|
| 1M in / 250K out | $0.438 | $0.500 |
| 10M in / 2.5M out | $4.38 | $5.00 |
| 100M in / 25M out | $43.75 | $50.00 |
Which should you pick?
Pick Particle 1 when you need the longer context window (1,048,576 vs 262,144 tokens). Pick Qwen 3 VL 8 B Instruct when price per token dominates your workload — high-volume classification, extraction, or batch summarisation.