OpenAI vs Qwen (Alibaba) Pricing
Per-million-token pricing for OpenAI and Qwen (Alibaba), with side-by-side flagship models, cheapest tiers, and context windows. Pricing data syncs weekly from a continuously-updated model catalog — last updated May 22, 2026.
As of May 22, 2026, Qwen (Alibaba) offers the lowest output-token price at $0.09/1M (Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct — $0.09/1M output).
Who wins on what
Cheapest input tokens
$0.03/1MOpenAI
gpt-oss-20b — $0.03/1M input
Cheapest output tokens
$0.09/1MQwen (Alibaba)
Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct — $0.09/1M output
Longest context window
2.0MOpenAI
gpt-5.4 (>272K context length) — 2.0M input tokens
Lowest average output cost
$1.17/1MQwen (Alibaba)
Provider-wide average across 39 models
Largest model catalog
140 modelsOpenAI
More options to match cost vs capability
Most reasoning models
11 modelsOpenAI
Models with dedicated reasoning / thinking support
Most vision models
10 modelsOpenAI
Models that accept image input
Side-by-side
OpenAI
Cheapest input
$0.030
gpt-oss-20b
Cheapest output
$0.140
gpt-oss-20b
Longest context
2.0M
gpt-5.4 (>272K context length)
Avg output / 1M
$28.06
Across catalog
Cheapest cached input
$0.125
GPT-5.1 Codex Max
| Model | In/1M | Out/1M | Ctx |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 Pro VisionReasoningTools | $30.00 | $180.00 | 1.1M |
| GPT-5.5 VisionReasoningToolsCache | $5.00 | $30.00 | 1.1M |
| gpt-5.4-mini | $0.750 | $4.50 | 272K |
| gpt-5.4-nano | $0.200 | $1.25 | 272K |
| GPT-5.4 Pro VisionReasoningTools | $30.00 | $180.00 | 1.1M |
| gpt-oss-20b | $0.030 | $0.140 | 131K |
Qwen (Alibaba)
Cheapest input
$0.030
Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct
Cheapest output
$0.090
Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct
Longest context
1.0M
Qwen Plus 0728
Avg output / 1M
$1.17
Across catalog
| Model | In/1M | Out/1M | Ctx |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen-Max | $1.60 | $6.40 | 33K |
| Qwen3 Max | $1.20 | $6.00 | 256K |
| Qwen3 Coder Plus | $1.00 | $5.00 | 128K |
| Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) | $0.400 | $4.00 | 1.0M |
| Qwen VL Max | $0.800 | $3.20 | 131K |
| Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct | $0.030 | $0.090 | 33K |
All prices in USD per 1 million tokens. Showing top 6 models per provider, sorted by output cost.
Related comparisons
Run the numbers for your workload
Calcaas multiplies per-token costs by your real usage patterns — inputs, outputs, retries, and conversation history — across both providers in one model.