Qwen3.8 Max vs DeepSeek V4 Pro: API price, context and cost per task
Alibaba's Qwen3.8 Max against DeepSeek V4 Pro - the largest models from two of China's biggest model families.
On output, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 3.1x cheaper ($1.91 vs $6 per million tokens). On input, DeepSeek V4 Pro is 2.1x cheaper ($0.955 vs $2 per million tokens). DeepSeek V4 Pro reads more per request: 1,048,576 tokens against 1,000,000.
Data updated 2026-11-11 - source: public OpenRouter model list, refreshed daily. Prices in USD, excluding VAT.
Specs and prices side by side
| Qwen3.8 Max | DeepSeek V4 Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Alibaba (Qwen) | DeepSeek |
| Input, per 1M tokens | $2 | $0.955 |
| Output, per 1M tokens | $6 | $1.91 |
| Cached input, per 1M | $0.25 | $0.0796 |
| Batch (input / output) | $1.15 / $3.45 | not offered |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Max output | 131,072 | 384,000 |
| Input types | text, images, video | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Tool calling | Yes | Yes |
| On OpenRouter since | 3 Sep 2026 | 24 Apr 2026 |
Highlighted: the cheaper price or the larger limit. "Not published" means the figure is not in the public model listing yet.
What a month of work costs
Four typical workloads at today's list prices. Reasoning models also bill their thinking as output tokens, so treat output-heavy numbers as a floor.
| Workload | Qwen3.8 Max | DeepSeek V4 Pro | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot10,000 conversations a month, about 1,500 input and 400 output tokens each | $54 | $21.97 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 2.5x cheaper |
| Coding agent300 tasks a month, about 80,000 input tokens (code context re-read across steps) and 8,000 output tokens each | $62.40 | $27.51 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 2.3x cheaper |
| Coding agent with caching70% of input served from the prompt cache | $33 | $12.80 | |
| Long-document analysis1,000 documents a month, about 50,000 tokens in and a 1,500-token summary out | $109 | $50.63 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 2.2x cheaper |
| Content drafting600 articles a month, about 3,000 tokens of brief in and 2,500 tokens of draft out | $12.60 | $4.59 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 2.7x cheaper |
Price stability over the last 30 days
- Qwen3.8 Max: no change in the last 30 days.
- DeepSeek V4 Pro: 12 price changes since 12 Oct 2026. Input ranged $0.209 - $1.6, output $0.418 - $3.2 per million tokens. Volatile: the listed price follows whichever provider OpenRouter currently routes to, so budget with the upper end of the range.
DeepSeek V4 Pro: price log
| Date | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-10 | $0.955 | $1.91 |
| 2026-11-08 | $0.424 | $0.848 |
| 2026-11-07 | $0.88 | $1.76 |
| 2026-11-06 | $0.955 | $1.91 |
| 2026-10-31 | $1.6 | $3.2 |
| 2026-10-30 | $0.816 | $1.63 |
| 2026-10-26 | $0.955 | $1.91 |
| 2026-10-25 | $0.209 | $0.418 |
What the vendors and benchmarks say
Qwen3.8 Max
"Qwen3.8 Max 0902 is an updated snapshot of Qwen3.8 Max from Alibaba's Qwen team."model card on OpenRouter
DeepSeek V4 Pro
"DeepSeek V4 Pro is a large-scale Mixture-of-Experts model from DeepSeek with 1.6T total parameters and 49B activated parameters, supporting a 1M-token context window."model card on OpenRouter
- Open-weight model. The same model can cost several times more or less depending on which provider serves it through OpenRouter. Source: OpenRouter provider listings
Which one to pick
Qwen3.8 Max has a steady list price and takes image and video input; DeepSeek V4 Pro is text-only but, at most points in the last month, much cheaper on OpenRouter. If you need multimodal input from a Chinese provider, Qwen; for the cheapest text throughput, DeepSeek.
Cheaper models with a similar context window
Models from our comparison set that cost less than both on a blended basis and support tool calling. They are not equivalent in quality - test before switching.
- GLM-5.3 (Z.ai): $0.0699 / $1.4 per million tokens, 1.05M context
- GPT-6 Luna (OpenAI): $0.1 / $0.5 per million tokens, 1.05M context
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (DeepSeek): $0.051 / $0.567 per million tokens, 1.05M context
Related reading
- Qwen AI Models Guide: Qwen3.8 Max, Pricing & Polish Test
- Qwen3.8 Max Test: 13 Tasks, Scores, Pricing & Access
- Lesser-Known AI Models: MiMo, Qwen3.8 Max, GLM-5.3, Muse Spark
- DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 Appears on OpenRouter With No Announcement
- DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi and Qwen: Free AI or Cheap API?
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017: API Pricing, Search API and My Test
How we calculate
Prices are the public per-token list rates from OpenRouter's model list, which match the vendors' own API prices for first-party models and show the current routed price for open-weight models served by several hosts. Monthly costs multiply those rates by the token volumes in each workload; caching assumes the stated share of input is billed at the cached-input rate. Benchmarks and claims are quoted from the named sources, mostly the vendors themselves - treat them as a guide and test on your own tasks. See also the AI cost calculator and all tracked model prices.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, Qwen3.8 Max or DeepSeek V4 Pro?
As of 11 Nov 2026, Qwen3.8 Max costs $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens; DeepSeek V4 Pro costs $0.955 and $1.91. Qwen3.8 Max is cheaper in 0 of the 4 monthly workloads we price on this page. The real bill also depends on how many reasoning tokens each model writes.
Which has the larger context window?
Qwen3.8 Max reads up to 1,000,000 tokens and can write up to 131,072; DeepSeek V4 Pro reads up to 1,048,576 and writes up to 384,000.
How much does a support chatbot cost on each model?
For 10,000 conversations a month (about 15 million input and 4 million output tokens) you would pay about $54 on Qwen3.8 Max and $21.97 on DeepSeek V4 Pro at list prices, before any caching or batch discounts.
Do they offer prompt caching or batch discounts?
Qwen3.8 Max lists cached input at $0.25 per million and a batch rate of $1.15 / $3.45. DeepSeek V4 Pro lists cached input at $0.0796 per million. Caching matters most for agents and chatbots that resend the same context on every turn.
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