Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking vs Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking leads the LLM Stats Score 18.3 to 10.8. Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct is 1.8x cheaper per token.

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking leads the overall LLM Stats Score 18.3 to 10.8, ranking #202 overall.

In the 45 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking wins 37; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

On price, Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct is roughly 1.8x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct also accepts a larger context window (262,144 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

overall performance matters — it scores 18.3 and ranks #202 on LLM Stats
your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes
you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 37 of 45 exact shared results

Choose Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

cost matters — it's about 1.8x cheaper per token
you process long inputs — it offers a 262,144 token context window

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Better token value: Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team

Core performance indexes

LLM Stats Score

18.3

#202 · 50 evals

Best

10.8

#251 · 45 evals

Reasoning

19.5

#188 · 28 evals

Best

8.4

#262 · 24 evals

Agents

7.9

#127 · 2 evals

Best

2.8

#154 · 2 evals

Cost, coverage & limits

Benchmark wins

37 of 45

Best

8 of 45

Input price

$0.20 / M

$0.10 / M

Best

Output price

$0.99 / M

$0.60 / M

Best

Context window

131,072

262,144

Best

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

6 shared

Index

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Math

22.5#130 · 11 evals

8.2#253 · 11 evals

Vision

12.8#98 · 30 evals

7.7#137 · 29 evals

Writing

11.6#62 · 3 evals

5.2#87 · 2 evals

Multimodal

15.7#85 · 24 evals

9.3#119 · 23 evals

Finance

23.9#62 · 6 evals

9.6#143 · 6 evals

1 more shared indexes

Legal

24.0#51 · 5 evals

8.6#132 · 5 evals

Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

50 reported for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking · 45 for Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

45 shared

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking outperforms in 37 benchmarks (AI2D, AIME 2025, BFCL-v3, CC-OCR, CharadesSTA, CharXiv-D, CharXiv-R, ERQA, Hallusion Bench, HMMT25, Include, InfoVQAtest, LiveBench 20241125, LiveCodeBench v6, LVBench, MathVision, MathVista-Mini, MLVU-M, MMBench-V1.1, MMLU, MMLU-Pro, MMLU-ProX, MMLU-Redux, MM-MT-Bench, MMMU-Pro, MMMU (val), MMStar, MuirBench, MVBench, OCRBench-V2 (zh), OSWorld, PolyMATH, RealWorldQA, ScreenSpot, SuperGPQA, VideoMMMU, WritingBench), while Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct is better at 8 benchmarks (BLINK, DocVQAtest, IFEval, OCRBench, OCRBench-V2 (en), ODinW, ScreenSpot Pro, SimpleQA).

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Sun Sep 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct costs less

For input processing, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking ($0.20/1M tokens) is 2.0x more expensive than Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens).

For output processing, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking ($0.99/1M tokens) is 1.7x more expensive than Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct ($0.60/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking is more expensive than Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct.*

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

Lowest available price from all providers

Sun Sep 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Input tokens$0.20

Output tokens$0.99

Best providerNovita

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Input tokens$0.10

Output tokens$0.60

Best providerDeepinfra

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue→

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

27.0B diff

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking has 27.0B more parameters than Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct, making it 675.0% larger.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

31.0Bparameters

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

4.0Bparameters

31.0B

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

4.0B

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct accepts 262,144 input tokens compared to Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking's 131,072 tokens. Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct can generate longer responses up to 262,144 tokens, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking is limited to 32,768 tokens.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Input131,072 tokens

Output32,768 tokens

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Input262,144 tokens

Output262,144 tokens

Sun Sep 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Both Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct support multimodal inputs.

They are both capable of processing various types of data, offering versatility in application.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Text

Images

Audio

Video

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Text

Images

Audio

Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Both models are licensed under Apache 2.0.

Both models share the same licensing terms, providing consistent usage rights.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Both models were released on 2025-09-22.

They likely represent similar generations of model development.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Sep 22, 2025

11 months ago

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Sep 22, 2025

11 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

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking is available from Novita, DeepInfra. Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct is available from DeepInfra.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Novita

Input Price:Input: $0.20/1MOutput Price:Output: $1.00/1M

Deepinfra

Input Price:Input: $0.29/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.99/1M

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Deepinfra

Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.60/1M

* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

✓ Preferred

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking vs Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct.

Which is better, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking or Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking leads the LLM Stats Score 18.3 to 10.8. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking compare to Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct in benchmarks?

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking scores DocVQAtest: 95.0%, ScreenSpot: 94.7%, MMLU-Redux: 90.9%, MMBench-V1.1: 88.9%, MMLU: 87.6%. Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct scores DocVQAtest: 95.3%, ScreenSpot: 94.0%, OCRBench: 88.1%, MMBench-V1.1: 85.1%, AI2D: 84.1%.

Is Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking cheaper than Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct is 2.0x cheaper for input tokens. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking costs $0.20/M input and $0.99/M output via novita. Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct costs $0.10/M input and $0.60/M output via deepinfra.

What are the context window sizes for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking supports 131K tokens and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct supports 262K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (18.3 vs 10.8), context window (131K vs 262K), input pricing ($0.20 vs $0.10/M). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking vs Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Which is better?

Choose Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Choose Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

At a glance

Capability indexes

Individual benchmarks

Human preference

Pricing Analysis

Model Size

Context Window

Input capabilities

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

License

Release Timeline

Knowledge Cutoff

Provider Availability

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Outputs Comparison

Judge for yourself.

FAQ

Which is better, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking or Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

How does Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking compare to Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct in benchmarks?

Is Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking cheaper than Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

What are the context window sizes for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

What are the main differences between Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

More Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking comparisons

More Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct comparisons

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking vs Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Which is better?

Choose Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Choose Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

At a glance

Capability indexes

Individual benchmarks

Human preference

Pricing Analysis

Model Size

Context Window

Input capabilities

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

License

Release Timeline

Knowledge Cutoff

Provider Availability

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Outputs Comparison

Judge for yourself.

Which is better, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking or Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

How does Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking compare to Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct in benchmarks?

Is Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking cheaper than Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

What are the context window sizes for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

What are the main differences between Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

Related comparisons

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