Gemini 2.5 Flash vs Qwen3-235B: Detailed Comparison
Choosing between Gemini 2.5 Flash (Google) and
Qwen3-235B (Alibaba) comes down to three things:
per-token pricing, context window, and which capability matters most for your workload.
Gemini 2.5 Flash costs $0.30/M input vs
$0.50/M for Qwen3-235B;
context windows are 1.0M vs
128K tokens. Detailed breakdown below.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | Gemini 2.5 Flash | Qwen3-235B |
|---|
| Provider | Google | Alibaba |
|---|
| Released | 2025-04-09 | 2025-04-29 |
|---|
| Input price |
$0.30/M |
$0.50/M |
| Output price |
$2.50/M |
$2.00/M |
| Cached input |
$0.0750/M |
— |
| Context window |
1.0M |
128K |
| Max output |
66K |
8K |
| Modalities |
text image audio video |
text |
| Tokenizer |
gemini |
qwen |
Capability matrix
| Capability | Gemini 2.5 Flash | Qwen3-235B |
|---|
| function calling |
Yes |
Yes |
| json mode |
Yes |
Yes |
| vision |
Yes |
No |
| streaming |
Yes |
Yes |
| audio |
Yes |
No |
| video |
Yes |
No |
| thinking |
No |
Yes |
| tool use |
No |
Yes |
Per-call cost on typical workloads
| Workload (in/out tokens) | Gemini 2.5 Flash | Qwen3-235B | Cheaper by |
|---|
| Standard chat (1K / 500) |
$0.001550 |
$0.001500 |
Qwen3-235B by $0.000050 |
| RAG (4K / 500) |
$0.002450 |
$0.003000 |
Gemini 2.5 Flash by $0.000550 |
| Long doc (20K / 1K) |
$0.008500 |
$0.012000 |
Gemini 2.5 Flash by $0.003500 |
| Very long context (100K / 2K) |
$0.033750 |
$0.053000 |
Gemini 2.5 Flash by $0.019250 |
When to choose Gemini 2.5 Flash over Qwen3-235B
- Per-token input cost is 40% lower — meaningful for high-volume workloads.
- Larger context window (1.0M vs 128K) — relevant when whole documents or long histories must fit in a single call.
- Supports vision — Qwen3-235B does not.
- Supports audio — Qwen3-235B does not.
- Supports video — Qwen3-235B does not.
When to choose Qwen3-235B over Gemini 2.5 Flash
- Supports thinking — Gemini 2.5 Flash does not.
- Supports tool use — Gemini 2.5 Flash does not.
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