DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) by DeepSeek or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-09-22.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3 Coder Next scores 0.7 points higher (9.2 vs 8.5) but costs 19× as much to run the benchmark ($476 vs $25.4; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3 Coder Next when you need intelligence above 8.5, and DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) when 8.5 is enough.
| Metric | DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 8.5 | 9.2 | +8.2% Qwen3 Coder Next is 8.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $25.37 | $476.23 | +1777.1% Qwen3 Coder Next is 19× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | Not reported | 6.95s | — not comparable |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.32 / $0.89 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): 8.2% more intelligence, 1777.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-5.6 Luna (Non-reasoning) scores 15.50 for $23.0.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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