// alternatives · October 2026
Qwen3 30B A3B alternatives
Cheaper models that come close, budget substitutes, and the cheapest step up — chosen on published LiveBench scores and live list price, never on our opinion. Every model here supports tool calling, as Qwen3 30B A3B does.
LiveBench hasn't published a run for Qwen3 30B A3B. The strongest benchmarked model at a similar or lower price is Claude Haiku 5.5, scoring 69.8 overall.
Qwen3 30B A3B: no published LiveBench run, $0.215 per 1M blended tokens, about $126.00/mo for a RAG assistant.
Benchmarked models at or below its price
Qwen3 30B A3B has no published LiveBench run, so these are the highest-scoring benchmarked models priced no more than 25% above it — a known quantity to test against.
| Model | Overall | vs Qwen3 30B A3B | Blended / 1M | RAG assistant | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 5.5anthropic 7% cheaper. Head to head → | 69.8 | — | $0.200−7% | $74.00/mo | 1M |
| MiniMax M3.1 Flashminimax 22% more expensive. Head to head → | 66.9 | — | $0.262 | $102.00/mo | 1.0M |
| GPT-6 Lunaopenai 7% cheaper. Head to head → | 64.6 | — | $0.200−7% | $74.00/mo | 1.1M |
| GLM 5.3 Flashz-ai 76% cheaper. Head to head → | 62.1 | — | $0.053−76% | $34.59/mo | 1.0M |
| Nemotron 3.5 Super VLnvidia 10% more expensive. Head to head → | 50.2 | — | $0.237 | $98.00/mo | 1.0M |
| Gemma 4 31Bgoogle 16% more expensive. Head to head → | 38.7 | — | $0.250 | $184.00/mo | 262K |
Qwen3 30B A3B alternatives FAQ
What is the best alternative to Qwen3 30B A3B?
Claude Haiku 5.5. 7% cheaper. Every suggestion supports tool calling, like Qwen3 30B A3B.
How alternatives are chosen
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-10-25. Only models with a published run are suggested on quality; a missing model means “not evaluated”, not “worse”.
- Prices — live list prices from OpenRouter, blended 3:1 input:output. Monthly figures price a RAG assistant with the published cached-input rate where there is one.
- Same job — suggestions must support every capability Qwen3 30B A3B has among tool calling and image input. Other listings of the same model (free or batch tiers) are variants, not alternatives, and are left out.
A few points on a public benchmark can hide large differences on your own tasks. Shortlist here, then decide with an eval — how to build one.