---
title: "Qwen3 235B A22B API pricing"
canonical: "https://router.xark.io/models/qwen3-235b-a22b"
description: "Qwen3 235B A22B at $0.13/M, 42% below the official rate. Apache 2.0 licensed, OpenAI-compatible."
section: "models"
updated: "2026-09-02"
source: "https://router.xark.io/models/qwen3-235b-a22b.md"
---

# Qwen3 235B A22B API pricing

Qwen3 235B A22B costs $0.13 per million input tokens and $0.51 per million output tokens, against an official rate of $0.22 and $0.88 — 42% below official pricing. It is an Alibaba model under the Apache 2.0 licence, with a 128K context window, callable through an OpenAI-compatible endpoint with the model id `qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct`. On an agent or chat workload that resends a fixed prompt prefix, where that prefix is billed at the cached rate of $0.026 per million, the saving reaches 67%. This model is listed for reference and is not currently served by an upstream provider, so requests for it return no available channel.

**Availability:** not currently served. No configured upstream carries Qwen3 235B A22B, so a request naming `qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct` returns `no available channel`. The rate below is what it will cost once an upstream carries it. 7 of the 24 catalogued models are callable today.

## At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Model id | `qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct` |
| Publisher | Alibaba |
| Modality | text |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 — [what it permits](https://router.xark.io/licences/apache-2-0.md) |
| Capacity | 128K tokens |
| Released | Feb 11, 2026 |
| Unit | per 1M tokens |
| Saving vs official | 42% |
| Callable today | No |

## Pricing

| Line item | Applies to | Our rate | Official rate | Saving |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Input tokens | All requests | $0.13/M | $0.22/M | 41% off |
| Output tokens | All requests | $0.51/M | $0.88/M | 42% off |
| Cache read | Prefix already cached | $0.026/M | $0.044/M | 41% off |

## Other providers carrying this model

| Provider | Input | Output |
| --- | --- | --- |
| AI Token Router | $0.13/M | $0.51/M |
| OpenRouter | $0.21/M | $0.85/M |
| DeepInfra | $0.15/M | $0.60/M |
| Together AI | $0.20/M | $0.80/M |
| Publisher (official) | $0.22/M | $0.88/M |

## What it is

A sparse MoE that punches well above its price. The workhorse choice when you want Apache 2.0 and don't need frontier reasoning.

## Good for

- General chat and assistant backends
- RAG answer synthesis
- Self-hostable-later architectures

## Calling it

### Python

```python
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key="YOUR_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://router.xark.io/api/v1"   # ← the only line that changes
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
)
```

### Node.js

```javascript
import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: process.env.ROUTER_API_KEY,
  baseURL: "https://router.xark.io/api/v1"   // ← the only line that changes
});

const response = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: "qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct",
  messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello" }]
});
```

### cURL

```bash
curl https://router.xark.io/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
  }'
```

## Questions

### What does Qwen3 235B A22B cost on AI Token Router, and what is the official rate?

Input is $0.13/M here against $0.22/M official, and output is $0.51/M against $0.88/M official — $0.090/M off every million input tokens and $0.37/M off every million output tokens. The headline 42% blends the two, weighted three to one towards output, because real workloads write far more than they read and a flat average of the two percentages would overstate what you actually save. Both figures are printed side by side on this page: the official rate is the only benchmark that makes ours mean anything.

### Can I call Qwen3 235B A22B right now?

No. Qwen3 235B A22B is catalogued but not currently servable — no configured upstream provider carries it, so a request naming `qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct` returns `no available channel` instead of a result. The rate on this page is what it will cost once an upstream serves it, not something you can spend today. The text models you can call today are Kimi K2.6, Kimi K3, GLM-5.2, DeepSeek V4 Pro and DeepSeek V4 Flash. 7 of the 24 catalogued models are callable, and every page says which it is.

### Does Qwen3 235B A22B support prompt caching, and what does a cached token cost?

Yes. A repeated prefix — a fixed system prompt, a tool schema, a document you keep querying — is served from the model's KV cache and billed at $0.026/M instead of the standard $0.13/M, which is 80% below the input rate. Alibaba's own cached rate is $0.044/M, so the discount applies on top of a rate that is already below official. Nothing has to be set on the request; the prefix is matched automatically. On an agent loop, where most of every request is unchanged from the last one, this is usually the largest single line on the bill.

### How do I call Qwen3 235B A22B from my code?

Point an OpenAI SDK at `https://router.xark.io/api/v1` and pass `model="qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct"` — the chat completions endpoint is `https://router.xark.io/api/v1/chat/completions`. Request shape, streaming frames, the usage block and the error envelope all match what your OpenAI client already handles, so the base URL and the model id are the only two lines that change. The bare name `qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct` and the URL slug `qwen3-235b-a22b` resolve to the same model. An integration written before the ids were namespaced therefore keeps working.

### How large is Qwen3 235B A22B's context window?

128K — 131,072 tokens in a single request, shared between everything you send and everything the model generates back. For comparison, the widest context in this catalogue is Llama 4 Maverick at 1M. Context is billed like any other input: filling the window costs the input rate on every token in it, every turn, which is why the cached-input rate matters more than the window size on a workload that resends the same prefix.

### What licence is Qwen3 235B A22B under, and can I use it commercially?

Qwen3 235B A22B is published by Alibaba under the Apache 2.0 licence. Apache 2.0 is a standard permissive licence: commercial use, modification and redistribution are allowed, subject to keeping the notices and stating what you changed. It also carries an explicit patent grant from the contributors, which terminates if you bring a patent claim over the work — that grant is usually the reason a legal team prefers it to MIT. No user threshold and no field-of-use restriction apply.

### How does Qwen3 235B A22B pricing here compare with other providers carrying it?

Of the 3 other providers we track carrying Qwen3 235B A22B, the lowest is DeepInfra at $0.15/M input and $0.60/M output, against our $0.13/M input and $0.51/M output. That is where the rates stood when we last reconciled them, and it can change without notice — we are not claiming to be the cheapest source for this model, only that our rate sits below Alibaba's official $0.22/M. If you find one of these figures stale, tell us and we will correct it.

### What is Qwen3 235B A22B actually good at?

A sparse MoE that punches well above its price. The workhorse choice when you want Apache 2.0 and don't need frontier reasoning. In practice that points at general chat and assistant backends, rAG answer synthesis and self-hostable-later architectures. The specifics that actually decide a fit — the rate, the licence and what it will and will not serve today — are all on this page rather than behind a sales conversation.

## Related models

| Model | Our rate | Callable | Document |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Kimi K2.6 | $0.55/M | Yes | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/kimi-k2-6.md) |
| Kimi K3 | $1.85/M | Yes | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/kimi-k3.md) |
| GLM-5.2 | $0.82/M | Yes | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/glm-5-2.md) |
| GLM-5.2 Air | $0.17/M | No | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/glm-5-2-air.md) |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | $0.28/M | Yes | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/deepseek-v4-pro.md) |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | $0.090/M | Yes | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/deepseek-v4-flash.md) |
| Qwen3 Max Instruct | $0.49/M | No | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/qwen3-max-instruct.md) |
| MiniMax M2 | $0.19/M | No | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/minimax-m2.md) |
| Llama 4 Maverick | $0.14/M | No | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/llama-4-maverick.md) |
| Mistral Large 3 | $1.20/M | No | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/mistral-large-3.md) |
| GPT-OSS 120B | $0.090/M | No | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/gpt-oss-120b.md) |