DeepSeek-V3 vs Qwen3-235B: Detailed Comparison
Choosing between DeepSeek-V3 (DeepSeek) and
Qwen3-235B (Alibaba) comes down to three things:
per-token pricing, context window, and which capability matters most for your workload.
DeepSeek-V3 costs $0.27/M input vs
$0.50/M for Qwen3-235B;
context windows are 128K vs
128K tokens. Detailed breakdown below.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | DeepSeek-V3 | Qwen3-235B |
|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Alibaba |
|---|
| Released | 2024-12-26 | 2025-04-29 |
|---|
| Input price |
$0.27/M |
$0.50/M |
| Output price |
$1.10/M |
$2.00/M |
| Cached input |
$0.0700/M |
— |
| Context window |
128K |
128K |
| Max output |
8K |
8K |
| Modalities |
text |
text |
| Tokenizer |
deepseek |
qwen |
Capability matrix
| Capability | DeepSeek-V3 | Qwen3-235B |
|---|
| function calling |
Yes |
Yes |
| json mode |
Yes |
Yes |
| streaming |
Yes |
Yes |
| thinking |
No |
Yes |
| tool use |
No |
Yes |
Benchmark comparison
Higher is better for all benchmarks shown.
| Benchmark | Category | DeepSeek-V3 | Qwen3-235B | Δ |
|---|
| MMLU-Pro |
general |
75.9 |
— |
— |
| HumanEval |
coding |
82.6 |
— |
— |
Per-call cost on typical workloads
| Workload (in/out tokens) | DeepSeek-V3 | Qwen3-235B | Cheaper by |
|---|
| Standard chat (1K / 500) |
$0.000820 |
$0.001500 |
DeepSeek-V3 by $0.000680 |
| RAG (4K / 500) |
$0.001630 |
$0.003000 |
DeepSeek-V3 by $0.001370 |
| Long doc (20K / 1K) |
$0.006500 |
$0.012000 |
DeepSeek-V3 by $0.005500 |
| Very long context (100K / 2K) |
$0.028650 |
$0.053000 |
DeepSeek-V3 by $0.024350 |
When to choose DeepSeek-V3 over Qwen3-235B
- Per-token input cost is 46% lower — meaningful for high-volume workloads.
When to choose Qwen3-235B over DeepSeek-V3
- Supports thinking — DeepSeek-V3 does not.
- Supports tool use — DeepSeek-V3 does not.
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