LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 vs Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct Comparison

Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

1 benchmarks

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 outperforms in 1 benchmarks (AIME 2025), while Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct is better at 0 benchmarks.

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Sat Mar 14 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Human preference votes

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 costs less

For input processing, LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 ($0.30/1M tokens) costs the same as Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct ($0.30/1M tokens).

For output processing, LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 ($1.20/1M tokens) is 1.2x cheaper than Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct ($1.49/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct is more expensive than LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers
Sat Mar 14 2026 • llm-stats.com
Meituan
LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601
Input tokens$0.30
Output tokens$1.20
Best providerMeituan
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct
Input tokens$0.30
Output tokens$1.49
Best providerDeepinfra
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Model Size

Parameter count comparison

324.0B diff

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 has 324.0B more parameters than Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct, making it 137.3% larger.

Meituan
LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601
560.0Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct
236.0Bparameters
560.0B
LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601
236.0B
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct accepts 262,144 input tokens compared to LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601's 128,000 tokens. Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct can generate longer responses up to 262,144 tokens, while LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 is limited to 128,000 tokens.

Meituan
LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601
Input128,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct
Input262,144 tokens
Output262,144 tokens
Sat Mar 14 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct supports multimodal inputs, whereas LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 does not.

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 is licensed under MIT, while Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601

MIT

Open weights

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 was released on 2026-01-14, while Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct was released on 2025-09-22.

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 is 4 months newer than Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct.

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601

Jan 14, 2026

1 months ago

3mo newer
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct

Sep 22, 2025

5 months ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Provider Availability

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601 is available from Meituan. Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct is available from DeepInfra, Novita. The availability of providers can affect quality of the model and reliability.

LongCat-Flash-Thinking-2601

meituan logo
Meituan
Input Price:Input: $0.30/1MOutput Price:Output: $1.20/1M

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct

deepinfra logo
Deepinfra
Input Price:Input: $0.30/1MOutput Price:Output: $1.49/1M
novita logo
Novita
Input Price:Input: $0.30/1MOutput Price:Output: $1.50/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

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Key Takeaways

Less expensive output tokens
Higher AIME 2025 score (99.6% vs 74.7%)
Larger context window (262,144 tokens)
Supports multimodal inputs

Detailed Comparison