Choose AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini if…
- you need to fit long inputs in one request — 262K tokens is roughly 393 pages, against 197
- you want the newer model — released 2026-09-23, 12 months after the other
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini vs Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B
Neither wins outright: AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini is the pick when you need to fit long inputs in one request, Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B when cost matters at scale.
Key numbers
| Spec | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Aion Labs | Alibaba |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.70 | $0.09 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $1.40 | $0.45 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.87 | $0.18 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 42% | 71% |
| Context window | 262K tokens (~393 pages) | 131K tokens (~197 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 48% | 23% |
| Max output per response | 33K tokens (~24,600 words) | 131K tokens (~98,300 words) |
| Input types | text | text |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2026-09-23 | 2025-09-18 |
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What it costs for real workloads
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $80.50 | $15.75 | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B saves $64.75 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $98.00 | $15.30 | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B saves $82.70 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $101 | $16.20 | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B saves $84.60 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $64.40 | $9.90 | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B saves $54.50 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $36.40 | $4.95 | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B saves $31.45 |
Capabilities side by side
| Capability | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini | Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | — | — | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | — | — | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | — | — | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | — | ✓ Yes | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | — | — | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
Price history
- AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini: price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-09-24.
- Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B: price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-03-10.
Which should you choose?
Choose Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B if…
- cost matters at scale — it is 79% cheaper on a typical 3:1 input/output mix ($15.75 vs $80.50 a month for 50,000 support chats)
- you need seed (reproducible sampling) — to repeat a generation for tests and evals; AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini does not advertise it
- you generate long outputs in one go — up to 131K tokens (about 98,300 words) per response
Frequently asked questions
Is AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini better than Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B?
Neither wins outright: AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini is the pick when you need to fit long inputs in one request, Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B when cost matters at scale. In short: AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini when you need to fit long inputs in one request, you want the newer model; Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B when cost matters at scale, you need seed (reproducible sampling), you generate long outputs in one go.
Which is cheaper, AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini or Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B?
Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B is cheaper: $0.18 vs $0.87 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 79% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $15.75 against $80.50.
How much do AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini and Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B cost per million tokens?
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini costs $0.70 per 1M input tokens and $1.40 per 1M output tokens; Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B costs $0.09 input and $0.45 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Which has the bigger context window, AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini or Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B?
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini: 262K tokens, about 393 pages, against 131K (about 197 pages) for Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B.
Do AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini and Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B support function calling and JSON output?
Tool calling — AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini: yes, Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B: yes. JSON-schema structured output — AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini: yes, Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B: yes.
Can AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini or Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B read images?
Neither accepts image input — both are text-in models.
Is AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini or Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B free to use?
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
What is the maximum output length of AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini and Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B?
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini can write up to 33K tokens (about 24,600 words) per response; Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B up to 131K (about 98,300 words).
When were AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini and Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B released?
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini was listed on 2026-09-23; Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B on 2025-09-18.
About the two models
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini
Aion 3.5 Mini is a multi-model roleplaying and storytelling system from AionLabs, built on the GLM family of models. It is the smaller, lower-cost sibling of Aion 3.5 and uses...
Full AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini specs →Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B
Tongyi DeepResearch is an agentic large language model developed by Tongyi Lab, with 30 billion total parameters activating only 3 billion per token. It's optimized for long-horizon, deep information-seeking tasks and delivers state-of-the-art performance on benchmarks like Humanity's Last Exam, BrowserComp, BrowserComp-ZH, WebWalkerQA, GAIA, xbench-DeepSearch, and FRAMES. This makes it superior for complex agentic search, reasoning, and multi-step problem-solving compared to prior models. The model includes a fully automated synthetic data pipeline for scalable pre-training, fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning. It uses large-scale continual pre-training on diverse agentic data to boost reasoning and stay fresh. It also features end-to-end on-policy RL with a customized Group Relative Policy Optimization, including token-level gradients and negative sample filtering for stable training. The model supports ReAct for core ability checks and an IterResearch-based 'Heavy' mode for max performance through test-time scaling. It's ideal for advanced research agents, tool use, and heavy inference workflows.
Full Tongyi DeepResearch 30B A3B specs →