How does Qwen 3.8 Max compare to the Qwen 3.7 series?

Alibaba Cloud positions Qwen 3.8 Max as its most capable Qwen model, with significant improvements over the 3.7 series. Qwen 3.8 Max pairs a Mixture-of-Experts architecture at 2.4 trillion parameters with a context window of 1M tokens and handles text-only and vision-language work in the same endpoint.

What inputs does Qwen 3.8 Max accept?

Text, images, and video. Qwen 3.8 Max returns text, so pair it with a generation-class model when you need images or video as output.

What is the context window for Qwen 3.8 Max?

The context window is 1M tokens, with up to 128K tokens per response.

Is thinking mode enabled by default on Qwen 3.8 Max?

Yes. Qwen 3.8 Max uses hybrid thinking mode with thinking enabled by default. Turn it off per request for simple queries, or cap the thinking budget to limit reasoning tokens.

How many images and videos can Qwen 3.8 Max handle per request?

Up to 2,048 image URLs or 250 base64 images, plus as many as 64 videos, with each video up to two hours or 2 GB. Images are capped at 16 million pixels each, and higher resolution consumes more tokens.

How do I access Qwen 3.8 Max through AI Gateway?

Authenticate with an AI Gateway API key or OIDC token and reference `alibaba/qwen3.8-max` as the model. You can call Qwen 3.8 Max through AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python.

What does Qwen 3.8 Max cost?

See the pricing section on this page for today's rates. AI Gateway reflects each provider's pricing for Qwen 3.8 Max with no markup and no platform fee on inference.

Does Qwen 3.8 Max support zero data retention?

Yes, Zero Data Retention is available for this model. Zero Data Retention is offered on a per-provider basis. See https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/capabilities/zdr for details.

Alibaba Cloud

Qwen 3.8 Max

Qwen 3.8 Max is Alibaba Cloud's most capable Qwen model, a 2.4-trillion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model that handles text and vision-language work in one endpoint within a context window of 1M tokens.

View API reference

Input and output price: Prices from: Input $2, Output $6, Per 1M tokens
24h uptime: Loading AI Gateway uptime

Get API key Read the docs

import { streamText } from 'ai'

const result = streamText({
  model: 'alibaba/qwen3.8-max',
  prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?'
})

Read docs

Overview Playground Providers Uptime Status Throughput Latency API Similar About FAQ

Copy link to headingPlayground

Try out Qwen 3.8 Max by Alibaba Cloud. Usage is billed to your team at API rates. Free users (those who haven't made a payment) get $5 of credits every 30 days.

Qwen 3.8 Max

Copy link to headingProviders

Route requests across multiple providers. Copy a provider slug to set your preference. Visit the docs for more info. Using a provider means you agree to their terms, listed under Legal.

Provider

Context	Max Output	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

Alibaba Cloud

Legal:Terms•Privacy

128K

2.6 s

50 tps

$2/M

$6/M

Read$0.25/M

Write$2.50/M

—

08/02/2026

Fireworks

Legal:Terms•Privacy

262K

128K

5.5 s

153 tps

$2/M

$6/M

Read$0.25/M

—

08/02/2026

Getting started

Call Qwen 3.8 Max through AI Gateway with the AI SDK generateText and streamText functions, or through the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Messages APIs by changing the base URL. AI Gateway authenticates the request and routes it to an available provider.

Install the AI SDK (pnpm add ai dotenv), create an API key from the API Keys page, and set it as AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY in your environment. Full setup is covered in the text generation quickstart.

index.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3.8-max',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Top-level parameters

The same Qwen 3.8 Max request in each API format AI Gateway supports.

top-level-params.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3.8-max',
    system: 'You are a concise technical assistant.',
    prompt: 'Summarize the tradeoffs between static generation and SSR.',
    maxOutputTokens: 1024,
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Standard parameters like prompt, messages, temperature, and tools work as documented in the AI SDK docs. These are the parameters with model-specific behavior.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`model`	`string`	Yes	Model ID in the form `creator/model`, e.g. `alibaba/qwen3.8-max`. AI Gateway routes the request to an available provider.
`maxOutputTokens`	`number`	No	Hard cap on generated tokens. Qwen 3.8 Max supports up to `128,000` output tokens. Reasoning tokens count toward this limit.
`reasoning`	`'provider-default' \| 'none' \| 'minimal' \| 'low' \| 'medium' \| 'high' \| 'xhigh'`	No	Provider-agnostic reasoning effort, available in AI SDK 7 or later. Maps to the provider’s native reasoning configuration; reasoning settings under `providerOptions` take precedence when both are set. See the Reasoning section below.
`providerOptions`	`Record<string, JSONValue>`	No	AI Gateway routing options under `gateway`, plus any provider-native options under the provider’s own namespace — see the table below.

Input limits

Input	Formats	Sources	Max count	Max size	Limits
Text	—	—	—	—	Prompt and response share the 1M-token context window
Image	—	URL, base64, Uint8Array	—	—	Sent as image parts in messages; counts as input tokens

Provider options

Set AI Gateway routing options under providerOptions.gateway. For provider-specific options, pass them under the provider’s namespace as documented by the AI SDK.

Learn more in the AI SDK alibaba provider docs.

provider-options.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3.8-max',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
    providerOptions: {
      gateway: {
        only: ['alibaba', 'fireworks'],
      },
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

These AI Gateway routing options apply to every model. Provider-specific options pass through under the provider’s own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) exactly as documented by the AI SDK.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`providerOptions.gateway.only`	`string[]`	No	Restrict routing to these provider slugs. Requests fail over only within the listed providers.
`providerOptions.gateway.order`	`string[]`	No	Preferred provider order. Listed providers are tried first; unlisted providers remain available as fallbacks.
`providerOptions.gateway.sort`	`'cost' \| 'ttft' \| 'tps'`	No	Rank candidate providers by price, time to first token, or tokens per second instead of the default routing order.
`providerOptions.gateway.zeroDataRetention`	`boolean`	No	Route only to providers with a zero-data-retention policy for this model.

Routing across providers

AI Gateway serves the same model through multiple providers and fails over automatically. order expresses a preference while keeping every provider eligible; only is a hard allowlist — if none of the listed providers are available the request fails instead of falling back.

Options under a provider's own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) are forwarded to that provider with the request. Providers ignore option namespaces that don't apply to them, so it is safe to set provider options alongside gateway routing options.

Reasoning

AI Gateway bridges reasoning across every API format. The AI SDK exposes a provider-agnostic top-level reasoning level (none, minimal, low, medium, high, or xhigh); the Chat Completions and Responses formats take the same effort under reasoning.effort; and the Anthropic Messages format uses a native thinking token budget. Whichever you send, the gateway maps it to the target model’s native configuration, converting between effort levels and token budgets as needed. Reasoning-related settings under providerOptions take full precedence over the top-level reasoning value and are never merged. Reasoning tokens typically count toward your output-token usage, though how they’re reported and billed varies by provider.

Learn more in the AI Gateway reasoning guide.

reasoning.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3.8-max',
    prompt: 'Explain the Monty Hall problem step by step.',
    reasoning: 'high',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Image input

Send images alongside text as message parts. Images count as input tokens.

image-input.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3.8-max',
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: [
          { type: 'text', text: 'Describe this image.' },
          { type: 'image', image: 'https://example.com/photo.jpg' },
        ],
      },
    ],
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Tool calling

Expose tools the model can call. Define each tool’s inputs with a Zod schema.

tool-calling.ts

import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'alibaba/qwen3.8-max',
    prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
    tools: {
      getWeather: tool({
        description: 'Get the current weather for a location',
        inputSchema: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
        execute: async ({ location }) => ({ location, temperatureC: 18 }),
      }),
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Copy link to headingMore models by Alibaba Cloud

Model

Context	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	Providers	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

alibaba/qwen3.8-max-0902

991K

4.6 s

51 tps

$2/M

$6/M

Read$0.25/M

Write$2.50/M

—

09/01/2026

alibaba/qwen3.8-flash

991K

1.2 s

84 tps

$0.16/M

$0.47/M

Read$0.02/M

Write$0.20/M

—

08/26/2026

alibaba/qwen3.8-27b

0.6 s

154 tps

$0.10/M

$0.40/M

Read$0.01/M

Write$0.63/M

—

08/14/2026

alibaba/qwen3.7-flash

991K

1.8 s

133 tps

$0.03/M+2 more

$0.13/M+2 more

Read$0.006/M

Write$0.04/M

—

07/28/2026

alibaba/qwen3.7-plus

1.9 s

58 tps

$0.40/M+1 more

$1.60/M+1 more

Read$0.08/M

Write$0.50/M

—

06/02/2026

alibaba/qwen3-vl-235b-a22b-instruct

262K

0.5 s

60 tps

$0.20/M

$0.88/M

Read$0.11/M

—

09/23/2025

Copy link to headingAbout Qwen 3.8 Max

Qwen 3.8 Max is the Max-tier release in Alibaba Cloud's Qwen 3.8 generation, released August 2, 2026 and available through Alibaba Cloud, Fireworks on AI Gateway. Qwen 3.8 Max uses a Mixture-of-Experts architecture with 2.4 trillion parameters, accepts text, images, and video, and works within a context window of 1M tokens with up to 128K tokens per response.

Alibaba Cloud positions Qwen 3.8 Max as its most capable Qwen model to date, with significant gains over the Qwen 3.7 series. Handling text-only and vision-language work in a single endpoint removes the usual split between a text flagship and a separate vision model. Target workloads include software engineering and office productivity, plus visual tasks: turning screenshots or design files into working pages, captioning video, and answering questions grounded in an image.

Hybrid thinking mode is enabled by default. Turn thinking off per request for short lookups, or cap the thinking budget when latency and token spend matter more than reasoning depth. Reasoning traces can carry across turns, so long agent loops keep their chain of thought through repeated tool calls. Qwen 3.8 Max supports function calling and structured output, and Alibaba Cloud also documents built-in web search and code execution tools for the model.

Qwen 3.8 Max accepts up to 2,048 image URLs or 250 base64 images per request, video up to two hours or 2 GB, and as many as 64 videos. Each image consumes tokens in proportion to its resolution, so downscale assets that don't need full detail.

You can integrate Qwen 3.8 Max through AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python. To drive a coding agent with Qwen 3.8 Max, run vercel ai-gateway coding-agents setup to connect Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, or Pi, then select alibaba/qwen3.8-max inside the agent.

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Configuration: Qwen 3.8 Max sits at the top of the Qwen lineup, so per-token cost is the highest in the family. Send the requests that need flagship reasoning here and route bulk classification or extraction to a Flash-tier model. See the pricing panel on this page for current rates.
Configuration: Thinking is enabled by default, which adds reasoning tokens to every response. Long agent loops that chain many tool calls multiply that overhead, so tune the thinking budget before running production traffic at scale.
Zero Data Retention: Zero Data Retention is available for this model. It is offered on a per-provider and model basis. See the documentation for details.
Authentication: AI Gateway authenticates requests using an API key or OIDC token. You do not need to manage provider credentials directly.

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Qwen 3.8 Max

Best for

Multi-File Software Engineering: Refactoring, diff editing, and repository-wide changes with flagship reasoning
Screenshot And Design To Code: Turning screenshots or design files into working pages
Video And Visual Q&A: Captioning long clips and answering questions grounded in an image
Office Productivity Automation: Document, spreadsheet, and workflow tasks that mix text with visual input
Unified Text And Vision Pipelines: One endpoint for both text-only and vision-language requests

Consider alternatives when

Cost-Sensitive Bulk Work: Qwen3.7-Flash handles high-volume classification and extraction for less
Balanced Quality And Cost: Qwen3.7-Plus covers most multimodal tasks below the Max tier
Previous-Generation Parity: Qwen3.7-Max already handles long-horizon agent loops in the 3.7 line
Image Or Video Generation: A generation-class model fits tasks that produce pixels rather than read them

Copy link to headingConclusion

Qwen 3.8 Max is Alibaba Cloud's most capable Qwen release, combining text and vision-language work in one endpoint with a Mixture-of-Experts architecture at 2.4 trillion parameters and a context window of 1M tokens. Point alibaba/qwen3.8-max at AI Gateway to run flagship reasoning, screenshot-to-code, and long-video workloads behind a single API key.

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions

How does Qwen 3.8 Max compare to the Qwen 3.7 series?
Alibaba Cloud positions Qwen 3.8 Max as its most capable Qwen model, with significant improvements over the 3.7 series. Qwen 3.8 Max pairs a Mixture-of-Experts architecture at 2.4 trillion parameters with a context window of 1M tokens and handles text-only and vision-language work in the same endpoint.
What inputs does Qwen 3.8 Max accept?
Text, images, and video. Qwen 3.8 Max returns text, so pair it with a generation-class model when you need images or video as output.
What is the context window for Qwen 3.8 Max?
The context window is 1M tokens, with up to 128K tokens per response.
Is thinking mode enabled by default on Qwen 3.8 Max?
Yes. Qwen 3.8 Max uses hybrid thinking mode with thinking enabled by default. Turn it off per request for simple queries, or cap the thinking budget to limit reasoning tokens.
Does Qwen 3.8 Max support function calling and structured output?
Yes. Qwen 3.8 Max supports function calling and structured output, and Alibaba Cloud also documents built-in web search and code execution tools for the model.
How many images and videos can Qwen 3.8 Max handle per request?
Up to 2,048 image URLs or 250 base64 images, plus as many as 64 videos, with each video up to two hours or 2 GB. Images are capped at 16 million pixels each, and higher resolution consumes more tokens.
Can I use Qwen 3.8 Max inside a coding agent?
Yes. Run vercel ai-gateway coding-agents setup to connect Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, or Pi, then select alibaba/qwen3.8-max inside the agent.
How do I access Qwen 3.8 Max through AI Gateway?
Authenticate with an AI Gateway API key or OIDC token and reference alibaba/qwen3.8-max as the model. You can call Qwen 3.8 Max through AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python.
What does Qwen 3.8 Max cost?
See the pricing section on this page for today's rates. AI Gateway reflects each provider's pricing for Qwen 3.8 Max with no markup and no platform fee on inference.
Does Qwen 3.8 Max support zero data retention?
Yes, Zero Data Retention is available for this model. Zero Data Retention is offered on a per-provider basis. See https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/capabilities/zdr for details.

Your use is subject to Alibaba Cloud's Terms & Privacy Policies.

Agent Stack

Core Platform

Tools

Learn

Build

Explore

Qwen 3.8 Max

Copy link to headingPlayground

Copy link to headingProviders

Copy link to headingUptime24 hours

Copy link to headingThroughput24 hours

Copy link to headingLatency24 hours

Getting started

Top-level parameters

Input limits

Provider options

Routing across providers

Reasoning

Image input

Tool calling

Copy link to headingMore models by Alibaba Cloud

Copy link to headingAbout Qwen 3.8 Max

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Qwen 3.8 Max

Best for

Consider alternatives when

Copy link to headingConclusion

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions