AI model comparison
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Llama 4 Scout
Pricing, context window, benchmarks, and features compared side by side. Or skip the guesswork and send one prompt to both.
Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct is a multimodal model that unifies strong text generation with visual understanding for images and videos. Its Instruct variant optimizes instruction-following for general multimodal tasks.
- Input / 1M
- $0.15
- Output / 1M
- $0.60
- Context
- 262K
Meta
Llama 4 Scout
Llama 4 Scout 17B Instruct (16E) is a mixture-of-experts (MoE) language model developed by Meta, activating 17 billion parameters out of a total of 109B.
- Input / 1M
- $0.18
- Output / 1M
- $0.59
- Context
- 1.31M
At a glance
Quick verdict
How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.
Lower price
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
1.1x cheaper for a typical chat
Higher intelligence score
Llama 4 Scout
8.1 vs 7.9 on Artificial Analysis
Larger context window
Llama 4 Scout
1.31M vs 262K tokens
Newer release
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Released October 6, 2025
Benchmarks
Benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct7.9Coding index
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B InstructNot availableAgentic index
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B InstructNot availablePricing
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Llama 4 Scout API pricing
Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.
| Metric | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.15 | $0.18 |
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.60 | $0.59 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | Not available | Not available |
| 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 VL 30B A3B Instruct$0.60Coding task
30K in, 4K out
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct$6.90Long document summary
150K in, 2K out
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct$23.70Specs
Context window and capabilities
How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.
| Metric | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 262K tokens | 1.31M tokens |
| Max output | 16K tokens | 118K tokens |
| Input types | Image, Text | Image, Text |
| Output types | Text | Text |
| Reasoning effort levels | Not available | Not available |
| Default reasoning effort | Not available | Not available |
| Release date | October 6, 2025 | April 5, 2025 |
Features
Supported features
API features available for each model.
| Metric | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Tool calling | Supported | Supported |
| Structured outputs | Supported | Supported |
| JSON mode | Supported | Supported |
| Reasoning | Not supported | Not supported |
| Temperature | Supported | Supported |
| Stop sequences | Supported | Supported |
| Deterministic seed | Supported | Supported |
| Verbosity control | Not supported | Not supported |
Keep exploring
More on these models
Other head-to-heads, the full model page, and the alternatives list for each model.
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B InstructView full model details- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs GPT-4o-mini
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 Coder Next
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs GPT-4.1 Nano
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B Instruct
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 32B
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 14B
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Solar Pro 3
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Sonar
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 30B A3B
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Hermes 3 405B Instruct
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Hermes 3 70B Instruct
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct vs Saba
- Llama 4 Scout vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
- Llama 4 Scout vs gpt-oss-120b
- Llama 4 Scout vs GPT-4o-mini
- Llama 4 Scout vs Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
- Llama 4 Scout vs Qwen3 Coder Next
- Llama 4 Scout vs GPT-4.1 Nano
- Llama 4 Scout vs Llama 4 Maverick
- Llama 4 Scout vs Solar Pro 3
- Llama 4 Scout vs Sonar
- Llama 4 Scout vs Hermes 3 70B Instruct
- Llama 4 Scout vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
- Llama 4 Scout vs Saba
- Llama 4 Scout vs Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
Our take
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is 1.1x cheaper for a typical chat. Llama 4 Scout scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (8.1 vs 7.9). Llama 4 Scout has the larger context window (1.31M 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 VL 30B A3B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout cheaper?
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs $0.15 per 1M input tokens and $0.60 per 1M output tokens, while Llama 4 Scout costs $0.18 per 1M input tokens and $0.59 per 1M output tokens.
Which has a bigger context window, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?
Llama 4 Scout supports up to 1.31M tokens of context, compared with 262K for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct.
Is Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct smarter than Llama 4 Scout?
On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct scores 7.9 and Llama 4 Scout scores 8.1, putting Llama 4 Scout ahead. Benchmarks don't capture everything, so the best test is running your own prompts through both.
Can I use Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct and Llama 4 Scout at the same time?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct and Llama 4 Scout answer side by side and keep the better response.
Why choose? Ask both.
Send one prompt to Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct and Llama 4 Scout at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.