For Developers/Models/Qwen 3.8-Flash-Next
Open SourceAlibabaReleased 2026-08

Qwen 3.8-Flash-Next

A 125B MoE architecture preview of Qwen4 with only 6B active parameters per token

Context window

262K

Input / 1M tokens

Free

Output / 1M tokens

Free

Provider

Alibaba

Data verified 2026-08-27

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is an open-weight multimodal mixture-of-experts model that serves as an early preview of the Qwen4 architecture. It features 125 billion total parameters with only 6 billion activated per token, plus 51 billion parameters in an N-gram embedding layer. The model introduces architectural innovations including hybrid attention (Gated DeltaNet + Qwen Sparse Attention), ultra-sparse MoE, and multi-token prediction, targeting cost-efficient long-context and agentic workloads.

Capability index

Relative estimates (0-100) to place this model against its peers, grounded in published benchmarks.

Coding
80
Reasoning
70
Math
70
Multimodal
80
Long context
90
Speed
90
Cost efficiency
100

How to access it

Available as open-weight on Hugging Face and ModelScope. A production API version (Qwen3.8-Flash) is served on QwenCloud at $0.16/$0.47 per million input/output tokens, but the open-weight preview itself has no published API pricing.

Strengths

  • ✓Extremely cost-efficient with 6B active parameters out of 125B total
  • ✓Open-weight for local deployment
  • ✓Native multimodal (text and image input)
  • ✓256K native context window, extensible to 1M tokens
  • ✓Optimized for agentic and long-context tasks

Best for developers who...

Cost-sensitive applications requiring strong performanceLocal deployment and self-hostingLong-context reasoning and agentic workflowsOrganizations seeking transparency via open weights

When to choose it (and when not to)

Reach for Qwen 3.8-Flash-Next when...

  • →When cost per token is a primary constraint
  • →For on-premise or local deployment
  • →When you need long context window support
  • →For agentic or multi-step reasoning tasks

Look elsewhere if...

  • ✕If you require official API support (open-weight version only)
  • ✕If data residency outside China is a strict requirement
  • ✕If you need the fully-released Qwen4 family (this is a preview)

How to use it

  • ›Allocate sufficient output tokens for complex reasoning (up to 262K recommended for internal reasoning)
  • ›Use preserved thinking mode for agent scenarios to maintain reasoning trace
  • ›For texts exceeding 262K natively, consider RoPE scaling techniques like YaRN

Quickstart

Python
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM
model_id = 'Qwen/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next'
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(model_id, device_map='auto')

FP8 quantized version available for reduced memory requirements

API model id: qwen3.8-flash-next

Benchmarks

BenchmarkScoreNotes
DeepSWE 1.1 (code generation)Not publishedEvaluated with Claude Code and mini-SWE-agent harnesses at 256K context
Text ArenaComparable to Qwen3.8-Max flagshipOutperforms DeepSeek-V4-Flash and Claude Opus 4.6 on majority of tasks

Source: Qwen Official Blog

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