# Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs Qwen3.8-Max

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is the cheaper of the 2: for the same tokens, 3 read for each 1 written, Qwen3.8-Max costs 3.5 times as much. Below are both price lists, what 8 everyday jobs cost a month on each, and how many tokens the same text takes on each, which can change the answer.

- Page, with a calculator for your own job: https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite-vs-qwen3-8-max
- Makers: Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite from Google, Qwen3.8-Max from Alibaba

## Price per million tokens, in US dollars

| | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Qwen3.8-Max |
| --- | --: | --: |
| Input | $0.30 | $2 |
| Cached input | $0.03 | $0.25 |
| Cache write | not listed | not listed |
| Output | $2.50 | $6 |
| Blend, 3 read for each 1 written | $0.85 | $3 |
| Batch input | not listed | not listed |
| Batch output | not listed | not listed |
| Context window, tokens | 1.05M | not listed |
| Capability score (Epoch Capabilities Index; GPT-5 is 150) | 145 | 157 |
| Longest answer, tokens | 66K | not listed |

## The same text, counted by each maker

Our lesson "How AI writes" (https://tecyfy.com/learn/how-ai-works/how-ai-writes), about 1,700 words of English:

- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite: about 2,200 tokens. Google does not publish the Gemini tokenizer. Its rule is that a token is about 4 characters, so the count is the characters divided by 4.
- Qwen3.8-Max: about 2,100 tokens. Counted with the tokenizer Alibaba publishes with its open Qwen3.8 models. Alibaba does not say its API models use the same one, so the count is marked as about.

## What 8 everyday jobs cost a month on each

Each job at its usual runs a day, for 30 days, at the standard price.

| Job | Tokens in, out, runs a day | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Qwen3.8-Max |
| --- | --- | --: | --: |
| A chat question | 300, 500, 100 | $4.02 | $10.80 |
| A hard question, with thinking | 300, 1,400, 100 | $10.77 | $27.00 |
| A long report, summarised | 60,000, 2,000, 20 | $13.80 | $79.20 |
| A 40-turn agent task | 2,800,000, 40,000, 10 | $77.88 | $429 |
| A support bot's reply | 4,000, 300, 2,000 | $84.60 | $378 |
| Sort a message into a category | 250, 5, 50,000 | $131 | $795 |
| Read an invoice into fields | 1,500, 250, 1,000 | $32.25 | $135 |
| Review a pull request | 25,000, 4,500, 50 | $28.13 | $116 |

## Questions

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or Qwen3.8-Max?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper: $0.30 per million tokens read and $2.50 per million written, against $2 and $6 on Qwen3.8-Max. On a mix of 3 tokens read for each 1 written, Qwen3.8-Max costs 3.5 times as much.

### Which is better, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or Qwen3.8-Max?

On the Epoch Capabilities Index, an independent score from Epoch AI that combines over 50 benchmarks, Qwen3.8-Max scores 157 and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 145, above the top of the range of doubt around Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite's score (GPT-5 is 150). One score is an average; test both on your own work before you switch.

### What does a support bot cost a month on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and Qwen3.8-Max?

At 2,000 replies a day, each reading 4,000 tokens (50 percent of them from cache) and writing 300, it costs $84.60 a month on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and $378 on Qwen3.8-Max: Qwen3.8-Max costs 4.5 times as much for this job.

### What does an AI agent task cost on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and Qwen3.8-Max?

One 40-turn task that reads 2,800,000 tokens in all, 90 percent of them from cache, and writes 40,000, costs 26 cents on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and $1.43 on Qwen3.8-Max. At 10 tasks a day that is $77.88 and $429 a month.

### Does the same text take the same number of tokens on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and Qwen3.8-Max?

No. Our lesson "How AI writes", 1,700 words long, is about 2,200 tokens on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and about 2,100 on Qwen3.8-Max. Each maker cuts text its own way, and every extra token is paid for at the model's price.

### Can I pay less on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and Qwen3.8-Max for work that can wait?

Not with a batch price: neither maker's price page lists one for these models. A cache still lowers the price of text the model reads again.

## Sources

- [Google: API prices](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing)
- [Alibaba: API prices](https://www.qwencloud.com/pricing/api)
- [Epoch Capabilities Index, by Epoch AI (CC BY 4.0)](https://epoch.ai/benchmarks/eci)

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