Neither wins outright: inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL is the pick when cost matters at scale, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking when you need log-probabilities.
| Spec | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | inclusionAI | Qwen |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.06 | $0.18 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.18 | $2.10 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.09 | $0.66 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 82% | 49% |
| Context window | 131K tokens (~197 pages) | 131K tokens (~197 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 22% | 22% |
| Max output per response | 33K tokens (~24,600 words) | 33K tokens (~24,600 words) |
| Input types | text, image, video | image, text |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | Yes | No |
| Listed since | 2026-09-10 | 2025-10-14 |
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) | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $8.10 | $55.50 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $47.40 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $9.00 | $42.60 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $33.60 |
| 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) | $9.36 | $46.80 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $37.44 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $5.88 | $27.00 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $21.12 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $3.18 | $11.10 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL saves $7.92 |
| Capability | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking | 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 | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | 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 | ✓ Yes | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | — | ✓ Yes | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
| Date | Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-14 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | $0.06 | $0.18 |
| 2026-09-26 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | $0.02 | $0.06 |
| 2026-08-06 | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking | $0.18 | $2.10 |
Neither wins outright: inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL is the pick when cost matters at scale, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking when you need log-probabilities. In short: inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL when cost matters at scale, you want to prototype at zero cost, you want the newer model; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking when you need log-probabilities.
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL is cheaper: $0.09 vs $0.66 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 86% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $8.10 against $55.50.
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL costs $0.06 per 1M input tokens and $0.18 per 1M output tokens; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking costs $0.18 input and $2.10 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Both take 131K tokens per request — roughly 197 pages of text.
Tool calling — inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL: yes, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking: yes. JSON-schema structured output — inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL: yes, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking: yes.
Yes, both accept image input.
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL has a free variant (inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-vl:free). Free variants usually carry tighter rate limits.
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL can write up to 33K tokens (about 24,600 words) per response; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking up to 33K (about 24,600 words).
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL was listed on 2026-09-10; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking on 2025-10-14.
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL: input price raised 65% ($0.02 → $0.06/1M), output price raised 66% ($0.06 → $0.18/1M) on 2026-10-14 (2 price changes since 2026-09-12). Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking: input price raised 35% ($0.12 → $0.18/1M), output price raised 35% ($1.36 → $2.10/1M) on 2026-08-06.
Ling 3.0 Flash VL builds on Ling 3.0 Flash (124B total / 5.5B active MoE from InclusionAI), further strengthening its language capabilities while adding native visual perception and advanced visual...
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