Is Qwen3 235B A22B a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Qwen3 235B A22B 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 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GLM 5.3 Flash scores 105.8 higher and costs 70% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
GLM 5.3 Flash is both better and cheaper than Qwen3 235B A22B: 105.8 points higher on LMArena and 70% less per million tokens, $0.56 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1366.1
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.796/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1471.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.237/M
Qwen3 235B A22B takes text, returns up to 8,192 tokens from a 131,072-token context, and is listed by 1 seller.
Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 32 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Qwen3 235B A22B scores 1366.1 at $0.80 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.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1471.9 +105.8 | $0.237/M | 70% |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 1464.8 +98.7 | $0.544/M | 32% |
| Qwen3.7 Plus | 1454.2 +88.1 | $0.560/M | 30% |
| Gemma 4 31B | 1441.7 +75.6 | $0.153/M | 81% |
| Hy3 | 1440.6 +74.5 | $0.144/M | 82% |
| GLM 4.6 | 1440.5 +74.4 | $0.760/M | 5% |
| Qwen3.6 Plus | 1436.7 +70.6 | $0.731/M | 8% |
| GLM 4.7 | 1435.9 +69.8 | $0.738/M | 7% |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | 1434.5 +68.4 | $0.143/M | 82% |
| MiniMax M3 | 1433.5 +67.4 | $0.525/M | 34% |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | 1431.8 +65.7 | $0.103/M | 87% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1429.9 +63.8 | $0.450/M | 43% |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427.4 +61.3 | $0.175/M | 78% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 1424.8 +58.7 | $0.302/M | 62% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 Exp | 1422.6 +56.5 | $0.305/M | 62% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 | 1419.7 +53.6 | $0.425/M | 47% |
| Qwen3.5-122B-A10B | 1417.9 +51.8 | $0.715/M | 10% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus | 1416.9 +50.8 | $0.453/M | 43% |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | 1415.3 +49.2 | $0.563/M | 29% |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507 | 1415.1 +49.0 | $0.747/M | 6% |
| Inkling Small | 1412.3 +46.2 | $0.637/M | 20% |
| Qwen3.5-27B | 1408.1 +42.0 | $0.536/M | 33% |
| MiniMax M2.7 | 1404.6 +38.5 | $0.525/M | 34% |
| Step 3.5 Flash | 1403.7 +37.6 | $0.150/M | 81% |
| Qwen3.5-Flash | 1397.7 +31.6 | $0.114/M | 86% |
| Qwen3.5-35B-A3B | 1395.5 +29.4 | $0.547/M | 31% |
| GLM 4.5 Air | 1383.7 +17.6 | $0.310/M | 61% |
| Solar Pro 4 | 1377.3 +11.2 | $0.158/M | 80% |
| GLM 4.6V | 1376.5 +10.4 | $0.450/M | 43% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.0 +6.9 | $0.688/M | 14% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.9 +6.8 | $0.463/M | 42% |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking | 1367.8 +1.7 | $0.412/M | 48% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct | 1420.6 | $0.632/M | reasoning |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 | 1419.8 | $0.153/M | reasoning |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct | 1417.6 | $0.343/M | reasoning |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 | 1383.6 | $0.084/M | reasoning |
| DeepSeek V3 0324 | 1375.0 | $0.438/M | reasoning |
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