ERNIE-4.5-21B-A3B-Thinking is Baidu's upgraded lightweight MoE model, refined to boost reasoning depth and quality for top-tier performance in logical puzzles, math, science, coding, text generation, and expert-level academic benchmarks.
Model details →Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking vs Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B
Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking wins on 2 of 6 axes — pricing and capability skew in its favour for most workloads.
Qwen3-235B-A22B is a 235B parameter mixture-of-experts (MoE) model developed by Qwen, activating 22B parameters per forward pass. It supports seamless switching between a "thinking" mode for complex reasoning, math, and code tasks, and a "n…
Model details →Side-by-side comparison
| Capability | Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking | Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Context window Maximum number of input tokens the model can attend to in a single request. | 131K | 131K | Tie |
| Input price (per 1M) Cost per million input tokens billed by the provider. | $0.07 | $0.46 | 🏆 Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking |
| Output price (per 1M) Cost per million output tokens billed by the provider. | $0.28 | $1.82 | 🏆 Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking |
| Tool / function calling First-class support for emitting structured tool calls. | — | Yes | 🏆 Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B |
| Vision input Accepts image inputs alongside text. | — | — | Tie |
| Reasoning mode Internal chain-of-thought / extended-thinking support. | Yes | Yes | Tie |
Frequently asked questions
Is Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking better than Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B?
Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking wins on 2 of 6 axes — pricing and capability skew in its favour for most workloads.
What's the price difference between Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking and Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B?
Input: $0.07 vs $0.46 per 1M tokens. Output: $0.28 vs $1.82 per 1M tokens.
What context windows do Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking and Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B support?
Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking supports up to 131K tokens. Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B supports up to 131K tokens.
Do both Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking and Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B support tool calling?
Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking: not advertised. Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B: yes.