DeepSeek-R1 vs Qwen3-235B: Detailed Comparison
Choosing between DeepSeek-R1 (DeepSeek) and
Qwen3-235B (Alibaba) comes down to three things:
per-token pricing, context window, and which capability matters most for your workload.
DeepSeek-R1 costs $0.55/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-R1 | Qwen3-235B |
|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Alibaba |
|---|
| Released | 2025-01-20 | 2025-04-29 |
|---|
| Input price |
$0.55/M |
$0.50/M |
| Output price |
$2.19/M |
$2.00/M |
| Cached input |
$0.1400/M |
— |
| Context window |
128K |
128K |
| Max output |
32K |
8K |
| Modalities |
text |
text |
| Tokenizer |
deepseek |
qwen |
Capability matrix
| Capability | DeepSeek-R1 | Qwen3-235B |
|---|
| json mode |
Yes |
Yes |
| streaming |
Yes |
Yes |
| reasoning |
Yes |
No |
| function calling |
No |
Yes |
| thinking |
No |
Yes |
| tool use |
No |
Yes |
Benchmark comparison
Higher is better for all benchmarks shown.
Per-call cost on typical workloads
| Workload (in/out tokens) | DeepSeek-R1 | Qwen3-235B | Cheaper by |
|---|
| Standard chat (1K / 500) |
$0.001645 |
$0.001500 |
Qwen3-235B by $0.000145 |
| RAG (4K / 500) |
$0.003295 |
$0.003000 |
Qwen3-235B by $0.000295 |
| Long doc (20K / 1K) |
$0.013190 |
$0.012000 |
Qwen3-235B by $0.001190 |
| Very long context (100K / 2K) |
$0.058285 |
$0.053000 |
Qwen3-235B by $0.005285 |
When to choose DeepSeek-R1 over Qwen3-235B
- Supports reasoning — Qwen3-235B does not.
When to choose Qwen3-235B over DeepSeek-R1
- Per-token input cost is 9% lower than DeepSeek-R1.
- Supports function calling — DeepSeek-R1 does not.
- Supports thinking — DeepSeek-R1 does not.
- Supports tool use — DeepSeek-R1 does not.
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