Qwen3.8 Flash
The fast, inexpensive open-weight tier of the 3.8 generation, built for low latency and high volume. Apache-2.0 weights make it easy to deploy and scale.
At a glance
Released
Aug 12, 2026
Provider
Alibaba
Context window
128,000 tokens
Max output
16,000 tokens
Modalities
Text → text
Knowledge cutoff
May 2026
API model ID
qwen3.8-flashLicense
Open weights (Apache-2.0)
Pricing
Standard
Input$0.14 / 1M
Output$0.42 / 1M
* Rates are from a third-party aggregator — verify before relying on them. A typical 1,500-token prompt with a 650-token answer costs ≈ $0.0005 on the standard tier. Run your own prompt through the calculator →
Best use cases
High-volume chat
Serves routine conversations cheaply at low latency.
Structured extraction
Parses and classifies text reliably at scale.
Edge deployment
Small and open enough to run close to users.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Low latency
- Very cheap
- Apache-2.0 open weights
Limitations
- Limited deep reasoning
- Shorter outputs than Plus and Max
How to test it
- No-code: open chat.qwen.ai and pick Qwen3.8 Flash from the model switcher — no API key needed.
- Playground: sign in to Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and run prompts in the workbench, then copy the generated code.
- API: create a key in Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and call the API (example below).
curl https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1/chat/completions \
# OpenAI-compatible endpoint
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "qwen3.8-flash",
"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain tokenization in one paragraph."}]
}'Where to get access
Developer docs
API reference, SDKs and quickstarts for Alibaba.
www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio ↗