API cost decision in 10 seconds

GLM 4.5 Air vs Qwen3.5-9B

Pick Qwen3.5-9B when budget and context both matter.

Page updated: 2026-05-26T19:08:13Z Data confirmed: 2026-05-26T19:08:13Z Prices normalized to USD per 1M tokens Sample workload: 1M input + 500K output

Budget verdict

Pick Qwen3.5-9B when budget and context both matter.

On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Qwen3.5-9B is estimated at $0.11 vs $0.54 for GLM 4.5 Air, saving $0.43 (78.9% lower).

Cost-first pickQwen3.5-9B

Context-first pickQwen3.5-9B

Sample savings$0.4378.9%

10x traffic gap$4.3

Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper on the standard workload and also has the larger context window. At 10x that traffic, the same price gap is about $4.3. Use the calculator below to replace the sample workload with your own token volume.

Cost sensitivity

Workload Sensitivity

Same prices, different token mixes.

Qwen3.5-9B stays cheaper across input-heavy, balanced, and output-heavy sample workloads.

Workload shape	Token mix	Better pick	GLM 4.5 Air	Qwen3.5-9B
Input-heavy / RAG	5M input + 500K output	Qwen3.5-9B	$1.04	$0.28
Balanced workload	1M input + 1M output	Qwen3.5-9B	$0.96	$0.19
Output-heavy chatbot	1M input + 5M output	Qwen3.5-9B	$4.33	$0.79

Cheaper input Qwen3.5-9B $0.125 vs $0.04 / 1M

Qwen3.5-9B is $0.08 cheaper per 1M input tokens (68% lower; 3.12x difference).

Cheaper output Qwen3.5-9B $0.84 vs $0.15 / 1M

Qwen3.5-9B is $0.69 cheaper per 1M output tokens (82.1% lower; 5.6x difference).

Larger context Qwen3.5-9B 131.07K vs 262.14K

Qwen3.5-9B has 131.07K more context (2x larger).

Sample workload Qwen3.5-9B $0.54 vs $0.11

Qwen3.5-9B is $0.43 cheaper on the standard workload (78.9% lower).

Estimate your workload cost

Your Workload Cost

Prices are normalized to USD per 1M tokens.

Monthly input tokens Monthly output tokens

GLM 4.5 Air Calculating… Estimated API cost

Qwen3.5-9B Calculating… Estimated API cost

Cheaper for this workload Calculating… Difference: calculating…

This estimate uses normalized public API pricing per 1M tokens. It is a planning aid, not a billing quote. Verify provider pricing, limits, and terms before production use.

Quick Decision

Verdict

Qwen3.5-9B has the lower input price; Qwen3.5-9B has the lower output price; Qwen3.5-9B offers the larger context window. For the 1M input plus 500K output sample, Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper for the standard workload.

For a 1M input token plus 500K output token workload, the estimated API cost is $0.54 for GLM 4.5 Air and $0.11 for Qwen3.5-9B.

Best Fit

Choose GLM 4.5 Air when its provider, model quality, latency, or availability is more important than the numeric price/context winner.

Choose Qwen3.5-9B when you care most about lower input-token price, lower output-token price, and larger context window.

Decision Notes

On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Qwen3.5-9B is estimated at $0.11 vs $0.54 for GLM 4.5 Air, saving $0.43 (78.9% lower).
Qwen3.5-9B is $0.43 cheaper on the standard workload (78.9% lower).
Qwen3.5-9B is $0.08 cheaper per 1M input tokens (68% lower; 3.12x difference).
Qwen3.5-9B is $0.69 cheaper per 1M output tokens (82.1% lower; 5.6x difference).
Qwen3.5-9B has 131.07K more context (2x larger).

Head-to-Head Specs

Feature	GLM 4.5 Air (Z.ai)	Qwen3.5-9B (Qwen)
Input Price prompt tokens per 1M	$0.125	$0.04
Completion Price per 1M tokens	$0.84	$0.15
Sample Workload Cost 1M input + 500K output	$0.54	$0.11
Context Window	131.07K	262.14K
Release Date	2025-07-25	2026-03-10
Popularity	#37	#61

Use-Case Decision Matrix

Use case	Better pick	Why
Budget-constrained production	Qwen3.5-9B	On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Qwen3.5-9B is estimated at $0.11 vs $0.54 for GLM 4.5 Air, saving $0.43 (78.9% lower).
High-volume input processing	Qwen3.5-9B	Lower prompt-token price matters most when prompts, retrieved passages, or documents dominate the bill.
Long responses and chatbots	Qwen3.5-9B	Lower output-token price matters most when assistants generate many completion tokens.
RAG or long-document work	Qwen3.5-9B	A larger context window leaves more room for retrieved passages, conversation history, or source files.

Related Alternatives

Same-provider lower-cost swaps

GLM 4.5 Air (free) can replace GLM 4.5 Air when lower sample workload cost matters most: $0.
GLM 4 32B can replace GLM 4.5 Air when lower sample workload cost matters most: $0.15.
GLM 4.7 Flash can replace GLM 4.5 Air when lower sample workload cost matters most: $0.26.
Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct (free) can replace Qwen3.5-9B when lower sample workload cost matters most: $0.

Larger context near this budget

Llama 4 Scout offers 10M context with $0.23 sample workload cost.
Owl Alpha offers 1.05M context with $0 sample workload cost.
DeepSeek V4 Flash offers 1.05M context with $0.2 sample workload cost.
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite offers 1.05M context with $0.3 sample workload cost.

Popular competitors

DeepSeek V4 Flash · DeepSeek · #1
Hy3 preview · Tencent · #2
Claude Opus 4.7 · Anthropic · #3
Claude Sonnet 4.6 · Anthropic · #4

Cheaper alternatives

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Larger context alternatives

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Provider catalogs

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Z.ai catalog

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Qwen catalog

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GLM 4.5 Air

GLM-4.5-Air is the lightweight variant of our latest flagship model family, also purpose-built for agent-centric applications. Like GLM-4.5, it adopts the Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture but with a more compact parameter...

Qwen3.5-9B

Qwen3.5-9B is a multimodal foundation model from the Qwen3.5 family, designed to deliver strong reasoning, coding, and visual understanding in an efficient 9B-parameter architecture. It uses a unified vision-language design...