Is Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 a good deal?

Whether anything in this catalogue beats Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.

13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026

As of Sep 23, 2026, Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Gemma 4 26B A4B scores 14.7 higher and costs 7% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.

Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements

Current model

Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507

Balanced

3 tokens in per 1 out

Gemma 4 26B A4B is both better and cheaper than Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507: 14.7 points higher on LMArena and 7% less per million tokens, $0.01 cheaper at this mix.

Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1419.8

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$0.153/M

Gemma 4 26B A4B

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1434.5

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$0.143/M

Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 takes text, returns up to 235,929 tokens from a 262,144-token context, and is listed by 10 sellers.

Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 2 models dominate it and give up nothing, 2 more dominate it but give something up. Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 scores 1419.8 at $0.15 per million tokens for this mix.

Envelope-safe replacements

Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.

ModelLMArenaEffective $/MYou save
Gemma 4 26B A4B 1434.5 +14.7$0.143/M7%
DeepSeek V4 Flash 04231431.8 +12.0$0.103/M33%

Higher score, lower price, named losses

Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.

ModelLMArenaEffective $/MYou give up
Gemma 4 31B1441.7$0.153/Mmax output
Hy31440.6$0.144/Mmax output
Gemma 4 26B A4B 1434.5 · $0.143/MQwen3 235B A22B Instruct 25071419.8 · $0.153/MLMArena EloEffective $/M · Balanced
136 rated, priced standard models. Chartreuse is the frontier. Cobalt is the model you named, when it is not on the staircase.

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