AI model comparison

Qwen3.8 27B vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B

Side by side comparison of Qwen3.8 27B and Qwen3.6 35B A3B on pricing, benchmark scores, context window, and more.

Qwen3.8 27B is an open-weight dense vision-language model from Qwen.

Input / 1M: $0.04
Output / 1M: $1.25
Context: 1M

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is an open-weight multimodal model from Alibaba Cloud with 35 billion total parameters and 3 billion active parameters per token.

Input / 1M: $0.10
Output / 1M: $0.90
Context: 262K

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At a glance

Quick verdict

How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.

Lower price

Qwen3.6 35B A3B

1.1x cheaper for a typical chat

Higher intelligence score

Not available

Not enough benchmark data

Larger context window

Qwen3.8 27B

1M vs 262K tokens

Newer release

Qwen3.8 27B

Released August 14, 2026

Benchmarks

Benchmark scores

Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.

Intelligence index

Qwen3.8 27B20.1

Qwen3.6 35B A3BNot available

Coding index

Qwen3.8 27B68.1

Qwen3.6 35B A3B41.9

Agentic index

Qwen3.8 27B45.8

Qwen3.6 35B A3B13.1

Pricing

Qwen3.8 27B vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B API pricing

Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.

Metric	Qwen3.8 27B	Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Input tokensPer 1M tokens	$0.04	$0.10
Output tokensPer 1M tokens	$1.25	$0.90
Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens	$0.00	$0.03
Cache writePer 1M tokens	Not available	Not available

What it costs in practice

Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.

Chat message

2K in, 500 out

Qwen3.8 27B$0.70

Qwen3.6 35B A3B$0.65

Coding task

30K in, 4K out

Qwen3.8 27B$6.17$5.12 cached

Qwen3.6 35B A3B$6.60$4.35 cached

Long document summary

150K in, 2K out

Qwen3.8 27B$8.35$3.09 cached

Qwen3.6 35B A3B$16.80$5.55 cached

Specs

Context window and capabilities

How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.

Metric	Qwen3.8 27B	Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Context window	1M tokens	262K tokens
Max output	66K tokens	236K tokens
Input types	Image, Text, Video	Image, Text, Video
Output types	Text	Text
Reasoning effort levels	Extra high, Medium, Low, None	Not available
Default reasoning effort	Extra high	Not available
Release date	August 14, 2026	April 27, 2026

Features

Supported features

API features available for each model.

Metric	Qwen3.8 27B	Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Tool calling	Supported	Supported
Structured outputs	Supported	Supported
JSON mode	Supported	Supported
Reasoning	Supported	Supported
Temperature	Supported	Supported
Stop sequences	Supported	Supported
Deterministic seed	Supported	Supported
Verbosity control	Not supported	Not supported

Our take

Qwen3.6 35B A3B is 1.1x cheaper for a typical chat. Qwen3.8 27B has the larger context window (1M vs 262K tokens). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is Qwen3.8 27B or Qwen3.6 35B A3B cheaper?

Qwen3.6 35B A3B is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Qwen3.6 35B A3B costs $0.10 per 1M input tokens and $0.90 per 1M output tokens, while Qwen3.8 27B costs $0.04 per 1M input tokens and $1.25 per 1M output tokens.

Which has a bigger context window, Qwen3.8 27B or Qwen3.6 35B A3B?

Qwen3.8 27B supports up to 1M tokens of context, compared with 262K for Qwen3.6 35B A3B.

Can I use Qwen3.8 27B and Qwen3.6 35B A3B at the same time?

Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Qwen3.8 27B and Qwen3.6 35B A3B answer side by side and keep the better response.

Why choose? Ask both.

Send one prompt to Qwen3.8 27B and Qwen3.6 35B A3B at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.

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