OPENAI VS ALIBABA
GPT-5.5 vs Qwen3.5 Plus
Qwen3.5 Plus is about 13x cheaper than GPT-5.5 on a blended 3:1 input:output rate — the same 10K-in/2K-out request costs $0.0088 vs $0.11. GPT-5.5 has the larger context window (1,047,576 vs 1,000,000 tokens).
Pricing verified
API pricing per 1M tokens
| Model | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Blended (3:1 mix) |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 | $5.00 | $30.00 | $11.25 |
| Qwen3.5 Plus | $0.40 | $2.40 | $0.90 |
Rates from official OpenAI pricing and official Alibaba pricing, checked 2026-08-11.
What a real workload costs
Example: one request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens, then that request at 100,000 runs per month.
| Model | Per request (10K in / 2K out) | Per month (100K requests) | Monthly delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 | $0.11 | $11,000 | +$10,120 |
| Qwen3.5 Plus | $0.0088 | $880 | — |
Model your own prompt sizes and volumes in the token cost analyzer, or check caching savings with the prompt caching calculator.
Specs side by side
| Spec | GPT-5.5 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Alibaba |
| Context window | 1,047,576 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Model class | General text | General text |
| Tokenizer | o200k_base (exact, public) | Proprietary (counts estimated) |
Count tokens for each model on its own page: GPT-5.5 token counter and Qwen3.5 Plus token counter. All OpenAI models are on the OpenAI Token Counter. All Alibaba models are on the Qwen Token Counter.
FAQ
GPT-5.5 vs Qwen3.5 Plus FAQ
Which is cheaper, GPT-5.5 or Qwen3.5 Plus?
Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper. At rates checked 2026-08-11, GPT-5.5 costs $5.00 input / $30.00 output per 1M tokens, while Qwen3.5 Plus costs $0.40 input / $2.40 output — about a 13x difference on a typical 3:1 input-heavy workload.
How much does a real request cost on GPT-5.5 vs Qwen3.5 Plus?
A request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens costs about $0.11 on GPT-5.5 and $0.0088 on Qwen3.5 Plus. At 100,000 such requests per month that is $11,000 vs $880 — a difference of $10,120 per month.
Which has the bigger context window, GPT-5.5 or Qwen3.5 Plus?
GPT-5.5. It supports 1,047,576 tokens of context versus 1,000,000 tokens — roughly 786,000 English words in one request.
Do GPT-5.5 and Qwen3.5 Plus count tokens the same way?
Not exactly. GPT-5.5 uses the published o200k_base tokenizer and Qwen3.5 Plus uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates). The same prompt will tokenize differently, which shifts effective cost per word.