Is Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 a good deal?

As of Oct 6, 2026, Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Gemma 4 26B A4B scores 49.8 higher and costs 11% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 145 rated, priced standard models are undominated.

Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements

Gemma 4 26B A4B is both better and cheaper than Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507: 49.8 points higher on LMArena and 11% less per million tokens, $0.016 cheaper at this mix.

Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 takes text, returns up to 235,929 tokens from a 262,144-token context, and is listed by 5 sellers.

Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: 2 models dominate it and give up nothing, 1 more dominates it but gives something up. Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 scores 1384.1 at $0.143 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
Gemma 4 26B A4B	1433.9 +49.8	$0.127/M	11%
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423	1432.1 +48.0	$0.113/M	21%

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
Qwen3.5-Flash	1397.0	$0.114/M	max output

Copy watch URL Open the frontier

The link keeps the model and mix, using the current catalogue. Monthly spend and switching cost stay in this browser tab and are left out of the link.