Qwen 3.8 Flash pricing for pdf summarization

Quick start

Call Qwen 3.8 Flash with the OpenAI Python SDK pointed at DashScope:

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["DASHSCOPE_API_KEY"],
)
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="qwen3.8-flash",
    max_tokens=1500,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Your prompt here"}]
)
# Cost: ~$0.002955 per call at standard rates
# Input:  $0.15/MTok
# Output: $0.47/MTok

How Qwen 3.8 Flash compares on cost

Per-call cost for all models scoring 50+ on pdf summarization benchmarks. Hover for details.

Highest-quality affordable option: Gemini 3 Flash at $0.0120/call (4.1x the cost, 83/100 quality). Qwen 3.8 Flash is already the cheapest choice for pdf summarization.

What drives pdf summarization cost

PDFs are the worst case for input cost: extracted text carries page furniture, headers, and footnotes that inflate token counts well past what the content warrants. Cleaning the extraction before sending it often cuts more cost than changing models. Long PDFs also routinely cross long-context pricing thresholds, so chunking is both a quality and a cost decision.

For Qwen 3.8 Flash specifically, that means output tokens cost 3.1x more than input, at $0.47 vs $0.15 per MTok. At this use case’s 15,000/1,500 token split, output accounts for 24% of the $0.002955 per-call cost.

Qwen 3.8 Flash quality benchmarks for pdf summarization

Benchmark data for pdf summarization is pending for Qwen 3.8 Flash. Test against your own evaluation suite before moving to production.

Benchmark data is not yet available for Qwen 3.8 Flash. We recommend testing against your own evaluation criteria.

About Qwen 3.8 Flash

Prices from help.aliyun.com/en/model-studio (qwen3.8-flash, read 2026-10-11). Cache hit: $0.016/MTok input. Not yet benchmarked, so never recommended.

Other models from Alibaba (Qwen)

You can compare Qwen 3.8 Flash head-to-head against any other model on our model comparison pages, or track how pricing has changed over time on the pricing history tracker.

Frequently asked questions