// head_to_head
Qwen3.8 Flash vs Beam 1.0 501B A23B
Published LiveBench scores across all seven categories, live list pricing, context windows, and the measured cost of a point of capability — for both models, side by side.
Qwen3.8 Flash is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here.
Beam 1.0 501B A23B does not have a published LiveBench run, so this comparison covers price, context and declared capabilities only. A missing score means "not evaluated", not "worse" — the right way to separate these two is an eval on your own workload.
qwen
Qwen3.8 Flash
- Blended / 1M
- $0.230
- Context
- 1M
- Released
- Aug 26, 2026
- Overall score
- 61.9
reflection
Beam 1.0 501B A23B
- Blended / 1M
- $0.438
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- Oct 16, 2026
- Overall score
- Not evaluated
Specs and pricing
| Metric | Qwen3.8 Flash | Beam 1.0 501B A23B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 61.9 | — |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.6321 | — |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.230win | $0.438 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.150win | $0.250 |
| Output price / 1M | $0.470win | $1.00 |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | $0.016 | — |
| Context window | 1M | 1.0M |
| Max output tokens | 131K | 131K |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — Qwen3.8 Flash on top, Beam 1.0 501B A23B below, both out of 100.
What each one costs to run
Per-token prices are hard to feel. These are monthly list costs for both models across five workload shapes, using each provider's published cached-input rate where there is one.
| Workload | Qwen3.8 Flash | Beam 1.0 501B A23B |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $63.95/mo | $140.00/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $94.60/mo | $260.00/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $82.56/mo | $280.00/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $178.55/mo | $325.00/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $355.00/mo | $725.00/mo |
Which should you pick?
You are cost-constrained
Qwen3.8 Flash
Cheaper on blended list price at $0.230 per million tokens.
Qwen3.8 Flash vs Beam 1.0 501B A23B FAQ
Which is better, Qwen3.8 Flash or Beam 1.0 501B A23B?
Qwen3.8 Flash is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here. Beam 1.0 501B A23B does not have a published LiveBench run, so this comparison covers price, context and declared capabilities only. A missing score means "not evaluated", not "worse" — the right way to separate these two is an eval on your own workload.
Is Qwen3.8 Flash cheaper than Beam 1.0 501B A23B?
Qwen3.8 Flash is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, Qwen3.8 Flash lists at $0.230 per million tokens and Beam 1.0 501B A23B at $0.438 — Qwen3.8 Flash is 1.9× cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — Qwen3.8 Flash charges $0.150 in and $0.470 out, Beam 1.0 501B A23B charges $0.250 and $1.00 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Does Qwen3.8 Flash or Beam 1.0 501B A23B have a bigger context window?
They are effectively the same — 1M for Qwen3.8 Flash and 1.0M for Beam 1.0 501B A23B.
Do Qwen3.8 Flash and Beam 1.0 501B A23B support prompt caching?
Qwen3.8 Flash publishes a cached-input rate of $0.016 per million tokens against a full input rate of $0.150. The catalogue lists no separate cached rate for Beam 1.0 501B A23B, which means the provider does not price it separately here — not that caching is unavailable.
Related comparisons
How these numbers are produced
- Price — provider list price from OpenRouter, refreshed every 15 minutes. “Blended” is a 3:1 input:output mix.
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-09-02, using their own category map. Each model shows its strongest published run. A blank means “not evaluated”, never “bad”.
- Cost per point — the measured dollars LiveBench spent on the run, divided by the score it earned.
- “Win” — awarded only past a threshold: one full point on a benchmark score, 10% on a price, 25% on a context window. Anything tighter reports as a tie, because effort settings alone move a LiveBench score by more than that.
Published benchmarks rank models on someone else's tasks. Before committing, see LLM & agent evaluation for building an eval on your own.