Grok 4.1 Fast vs Qwen3-235B-A22B
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
xAI · Nov 2025
A 2M-token context window for $0.20 per million input tokens — the cheapest long-context frontier offering anywhere.
Alibaba (Qwen) · Jul 2025
The most popular open general-purpose Qwen: 235B MoE with hybrid thinking, a staple of the 2025 open-source ecosystem.
The verdict
These two models don't yet share verified results on the benchmarks we track, so judge them on specs, pricing and intended use. Grok 4.1 Fast is about 1.4x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix). Grok 4.1 Fast also takes 2M of context versus 262K for Qwen3-235B-A22B. And Qwen3-235B-A22B is open-weights (Apache 2.0), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Specs & pricing
| Grok 4.1 Fast | Qwen3-235B-A22B | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | 69.0 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.2 | $0.22 |
| Output price / 1M | $0.5 | $0.88 |
| Context window | 2M | 262K |
| Max output | — | 33K |
| Open weights | no | yes (Apache 2.0) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Nov 2025 | Apr 2025 |
| Released | Nov 2025 | Jul 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $2.75 | $3.52 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Grok 4.1 Fast or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- These two models don't yet share verified results on the benchmarks we track, so judge them on specs, pricing and intended use. Grok 4.1 Fast is about 1.4x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix). Grok 4.1 Fast also takes 2M of context versus 262K for Qwen3-235B-A22B. And Qwen3-235B-A22B is open-weights (Apache 2.0), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, Grok 4.1 Fast or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- Grok 4.1 Fast costs $0.2/$0.5 per million input/output tokens, while Qwen3-235B-A22B costs $0.22/$0.88. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $2.75 versus $3.52.
- Which model is better for coding, Grok 4.1 Fast or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- We don't yet track SWE-bench Verified results for both models; check their individual pages for coding-related scores.