AllocateDeepseek V3.1 NVFP4 vs Qwen 3.5
On provider list prices, Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4 costs $0.60 per million input tokens against $0.60 for Qwen 3.5: effectively level. Output is $1.70 against $3.60 (2.1x). On Allocate both bill at list plus the 7% transaction fee.
Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4
Qwen 3.5Specifications and provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-08. Billed price is list plus the 7% transaction fee.
What the numbers say
Take 1,000,000 requests a month at 1,200 input and 350 output tokens each. That workload costs $1,315 a month on Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4 and $1,980 on Qwen 3.5 at list: a gap of $665, or 1.5x.
Qwen 3.5 reads 256K tokens per request against 128K for Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4, 2.0x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.
Choose Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4 for
- Fine-tuning under a permissive license (MIT)
Choose Qwen 3.5 for
- Multilingual support agents
- Translation-adjacent workflows
- Fine-tuning under Apache 2.0
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4 or Qwen 3.5?
Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $0.60/$1.70 per million tokens in and out against $0.60/$3.60 for Qwen 3.5. Billed on Allocate: $0.64/$1.82 against $0.64/$3.85, list plus 7%.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen 3.5: 262,144 tokens (256K) against 131,072 (128K) for Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4.
Can I fine-tune Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4 or Qwen 3.5?
Both publish open weights (Deepseek V3.1 NVFP4: MIT; Qwen 3.5: Apache 2.0), so both can be fine-tuned. On Allocate the trained weights stay inside your boundary and belong to you.
Related comparisons
Run the numbers on your workload
Or don’t choose. On Allocate a route name is the contract: point yours at one model today, swap to the other tomorrow, and compare them on your live traffic with per-token metering.