Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) | Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $2 | $0.4 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $4 | $4 |
Verdict. DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) and Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) split the benchmark comparison evenly at 1–1. The tiebreaker here is price, speed, and what you actually run them on.
Pricing. Both models sit in the mid-tier bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is strongest on Coding Index (24.6), Intelligence Index (18.6). Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) leads on Intelligence Index (20.9).
Speed. Speed data is incomplete for this pair; benchmark and price should decide.
Provider. DeepSeek and Alibaba sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: DeepSeek tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Alibaba often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) costs $120.00 ($1440/year); Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) costs $72.00 ($864/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) ≈ $18.00/run, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) ≈ $10.00/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) ≈ $800/run, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) ≈ $480/run. Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $1.30/M tokens vs $2.50/M for DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25).
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) generates tokens faster at 57 tok/s vs — tok/s. However, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) has lower time-to-first-token (2.82s vs —s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) for lower cost, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and Qwen3 VL 235B A22B (Reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.