---
title: "Qwen3 Max Instruct API pricing"
canonical: "https://router.xark.io/models/qwen3-max-instruct"
description: "Qwen3 Max Instruct at $0.49/M, 43% below the official rate. Apache 2.0 licensed, OpenAI-compatible."
section: "models"
updated: "2026-09-02"
source: "https://router.xark.io/models/qwen3-max-instruct.md"
---

# Qwen3 Max Instruct API pricing

Qwen3 Max Instruct costs $0.49 per million input tokens and $1.95 per million output tokens, against an official rate of $0.85 and $3.40 — 43% below official pricing. It is an Alibaba model under the Apache 2.0 licence, with a 256K context window, callable through an OpenAI-compatible endpoint with the model id `qwen/qwen3-max-instruct`. On an agent or chat workload that resends a fixed prompt prefix, where that prefix is billed at the cached rate of $0.10 per million, the saving reaches 68%. 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 Max Instruct, so a request naming `qwen/qwen3-max-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-max-instruct` |
| Publisher | Alibaba |
| Modality | text |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 — [what it permits](https://router.xark.io/licences/apache-2-0.md) |
| Capacity | 256K tokens |
| Released | Apr 29, 2026 |
| Unit | per 1M tokens |
| Saving vs official | 43% |
| Callable today | No |

## Pricing

| Line item | Applies to | Our rate | Official rate | Saving |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Input tokens | All requests | $0.49/M | $0.85/M | 42% off |
| Output tokens | All requests | $1.95/M | $3.40/M | 43% off |
| Cache read | Prefix already cached | $0.10/M | $0.17/M | 41% off |

## Other providers carrying this model

| Provider | Input | Output |
| --- | --- | --- |
| AI Token Router | $0.49/M | $1.95/M |
| OpenRouter | $0.82/M | $3.30/M |
| DeepInfra | $0.60/M | $2.40/M |
| Together AI | $0.80/M | $3.20/M |
| Publisher (official) | $0.85/M | $3.40/M |

## What it is

Apache 2.0 with no strings attached, which matters if your legal team reads licenses. Strong multilingual coverage and reliable structured output.

## Good for

- Products shipping into regulated or licence-sensitive contexts
- Multilingual applications beyond EN/ZH
- JSON-mode and schema-constrained generation

## 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-max-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-max-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-max-instruct",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
  }'
```

## Questions

### What does Qwen3 Max Instruct cost on AI Token Router, and what is the official rate?

Input is $0.49/M here against $0.85/M official, and output is $1.95/M against $3.40/M official — $0.36/M off every million input tokens and $1.45/M off every million output tokens. The headline 43% 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 Max Instruct right now?

No. Qwen3 Max Instruct is catalogued but not currently servable — no configured upstream provider carries it, so a request naming `qwen/qwen3-max-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 Max Instruct 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 $0.10/M instead of the standard $0.49/M, which is 80% below the input rate. Alibaba's own cached rate is $0.17/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 Max Instruct from my code?

Point an OpenAI SDK at `https://router.xark.io/api/v1` and pass `model="qwen/qwen3-max-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-max-instruct`, without the provider prefix, resolves to the same model. An integration written before the ids were namespaced therefore keeps working.

### How large is Qwen3 Max Instruct's context window?

256K — 262,144 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 Max Instruct under, and can I use it commercially?

Qwen3 Max Instruct 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 Max Instruct pricing here compare with other providers carrying it?

Of the 3 other providers we track carrying Qwen3 Max Instruct, the lowest is DeepInfra at $0.60/M input and $2.40/M output, against our $0.49/M input and $1.95/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 $0.85/M. If you find one of these figures stale, tell us and we will correct it.

### What is Qwen3 Max Instruct actually good at?

Apache 2.0 with no strings attached, which matters if your legal team reads licenses. Strong multilingual coverage and reliable structured output. In practice that points at products shipping into regulated or licence-sensitive contexts, multilingual applications beyond EN/ZH and jSON-mode and schema-constrained generation. 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 235B A22B | $0.13/M | No | [read](https://router.xark.io/models/qwen3-235b-a22b.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) |