Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking
AlibabaReleased Oct 6, 2025Open weights · Apache 2.0qwen3-vl-30b-a3b-thinking
- Reasoning
- yes
- Knowledge cutoff
- September 2025
- Context
- 262K tokens
- Max output
- 32k tokens
- Input
- text, image, video
- API features
- tools, structured outputs, JSON mode, seed, logprobs
- Alibaba's API
- yes, as qwen3-vl-30b-a3b-thinking
Read Oct 23, 06:00 UTC from the hosts' published offers and OpenRouter, spec sheet from Alibaba · cutoff: aiknowledgecutoff.com
The cheapest host, SiliconFlow, serves fp8 weights (maker: bf16). Weights and context per host
Run it yourself
open weights, Apache 2.0 · fits 6 of the 6 workstations in our guideSelf-host guide ›- Parameters
- 30B
- 3B active per token (MoE)
- Memory needed
- 18 GB
- in INT4 · 36 GB in INT8
- Smallest cloud setup
- RTX 3090
- 24 GB · $0.17/h, about $124 a month
- Worth it above
- 96M tokens
- a month, against the cheapest API at $1.29 per M
| Quantization | Memory | Smallest cloud GPU | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| INT4 (Q4) | 18 GB | RTX 3090 · $0.17/h | smallest footprint, minor quality loss |
| INT8 (Q8) | 36 GB | A100 · $1.19/h | near-lossless |
| FP16 (full) | 72 GB | A100 · $1.19/h | reference quality |
At home: in INT4 it fits a RTX 5090 (32 GB) + host PC (plus a host PC), about $3,500 once, or $0.1332/h over 3 years, electricity aside; it pays for itself after about 3B tokens against the cheapest API.
Memory ≈ parameters × bytes per parameter × 1.2 · cloud price: on-demand rate, running 24/7 · builds: GGUF, AWQ, MLX, GPTQ, Ollama · break-even calculator
| Provider | Input | Output | Cache ↑ | tok/s | First token | Uptime 24h | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SiliconFlowfp8 (bf16) · 256K ctx | $0.29 | $1.00 | — | 28 | 2.48 s | 100% | Oct 23 |
| Alibabaprecision not read: host terms · 128K ctx (256K) · 32K out | $0.20 | $2.40 | — | — | — | 100% | Oct 9 |
2 of 2 providers · prices per million tokens, read Oct 23, 06:00 UTC · speed: OpenRouter, median of the last 30 min, read Oct 23, 06:00 UTC · uptime: OpenRouter, last 24 h · under each host: weights precision, context and max output as served, the maker's value in brackets when the host's differs
| Provider | Weights | Context | Max output | Tools | Structured outputs | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SiliconFlow | fp8 | 256K | not read: host terms | yes | yes | yes |
| Alibaba | not read: host terms | 128K | 32K | yes | yes | yes |
Weights, context and max output: read at each host's own catalogue or docs where its terms allow, otherwise as the host declares to OpenRouter; hover a cell for its source and date · tools, structured outputs, reasoning: as declared to OpenRouter · not verified by us
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking spec sheet, field by field, with sources
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking spec sheetmaker-declared
What Alibaba declares about the model itself — read from its own weights repository and documentation, not from any host. What each endpoint actually serves is in the pricing above: the two can differ, and both are true.
- Context window
- 262,144 tokens
- Parameters
- 31,070,754,032≈ 31.1B
- Active experts
- 8 of 128 active per token
- Weight precision
- BF16
- License
- Apache 2.0 — open weights, permissivecurated · read 2026-09-07Scope: the licence on the published weights, and nothing else. It is not the maker's acceptable-use policy, which is a separate document, and it is not the contract you sign with whichever host you call — hosts set their own terms, which this index does not read.
- Knowledge cutoff
- not published by the maker≈ September 2025 third-party estimate — not the maker's figurecurated
- Modalities
- text · image · video
- Max output (official)
- to verify
- Release date
- to verify≈ October 6, 2025 third-party catalogue — not the maker's figure
- Maker lifecycle status
- to verify
Also declared in the weights
- Architecture class
- Qwen3VLMoeForConditionalGeneration
- Layers
- 48
- Vocabulary
- 151,936 tokens
- Weights first published
- September 30, 2025
- Weights last updated
- November 26, 2025
Qwen/Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Thinking · config.json @ d0ed038 · read 2026-10-08 · 6 of 10 fields published by the maker
| Provider | Chatbot 1,000 in / 500 out | RAG / long context 8,000 in / 500 out | Batch summarize 4,000 in / 1,000 out |
|---|---|---|---|
| SiliconFlow | $0.79 | $2.82 | $2.16 |
| Alibaba | $1.40 | $2.80 | $3.20 |
What each host bills for 1,000 requests of a representative job
Your own workload
Other Alibaba models · all its models, hosts and history ›
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- Qwen3.5 397B A17B10 providers · from $3.45
- Qwen3.6 27B9 providers · from $2.25
- Qwen3.5-35B-A3B8 providers · from $1.14