DeepSeek R1 Turbo vs Qwen3.8 27B
Practical read: Qwen3.8 27B costs about a ninth as much. One API key runs both.
No card required. Start with 1 million free tokens.
Side by side:
| Attribute | DeepSeek R1 Turbo | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Price, 1M in + out | $3.38 Novita AI, cheapest route | $0.39 Engy, cheapest route |
| Best for | Low cost | |
| Input / output, 1M | $0.74 / $2.64 | $0.047 / $0.34 |
| Cached input | Not published | $0.01/1M to $0.180405/1M |
| Context window | 64K 64,000 tokens | 66K 65,536 tokens |
| First token, p50 | Measuring | 0.93 s via Crusoe |
| AI IQ | Unrated | IQ 115 #57 on AI IQ |
| Provider routes | 1 | 21 with failover |
| Privacy | Varies by provider | Confidential E2EE and zero retention route |
| Recent route uptime range | not enough data | 100.00% |
| Publisher | DeepSeek | Alibaba Cloud Model Studio |
| Modes | chat | chat |
| More detail |
Price adds one million input and one million output tokens on the cheapest route. Prices and speed change: see the monthly reports and run a small eval before you choose a default.
Test both with your agent
Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent.
Compare DeepSeek R1 Turbo and Qwen3.8 27B in this project through TrustedRouter.
1. Read https://trustedrouter.com/docs/llms.txt
2. Point the OpenAI-compatible client at
https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1 and read the key from
TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY.
3. Run our eval prompts on deepseek/deepseek-r1-turbo, then on qwen/qwen3.8-27b.
4. Show me cost, latency and quality side by side before changing the default.
import os
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
base_url="https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1",
api_key=os.environ["TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY"],
)
for model in ("deepseek/deepseek-r1-turbo", "qwen/qwen3.8-27b"):
response = client.chat.completions.create(
model=model,
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?"}],
)
print(model, response.choices[0].message.content)
for model in deepseek/deepseek-r1-turbo qwen/qwen3.8-27b; do
curl https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TRUSTEDROUTER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d "{\"model\": \"$model\", \"messages\": [{\"role\": \"user\", \"content\": \"What is the capital of France?\"}]}"
done
Questions
Which should I use, DeepSeek R1 Turbo or Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B?
Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B has the lower published input-plus-output rate, more Credits provider routes and the larger context window. There is not enough recent probe data to compare speed.
Is DeepSeek R1 Turbo or Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B cheaper?
The current cheapest TrustedRouter route is $3.376/1M for DeepSeek R1 Turbo and $0.385075/1M for Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B. The comparison uses current catalog prices and updates as provider pricing changes.
Is DeepSeek R1 Turbo or Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B faster?
Current measured p50 time to first token is not enough data for DeepSeek R1 Turbo and 929 ms for Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B. These are routed probe measurements, not vendor-advertised speeds, and update as new samples arrive.
Can I test DeepSeek R1 Turbo and Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B with the same API?
Yes. Use the same OpenAI-compatible TrustedRouter base URL and API key, then change only the model id between deepseek/deepseek-r1-turbo and qwen/qwen3.8-27b. This makes side-by-side evals possible without maintaining two provider integrations.
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Try DeepSeek R1 Turbo and Qwen3.8 27B with one key.
TrustedRouter is useful when you know the model you want, but still need provider rollover, budget limits, usage records, and a prompt path you can verify.
No card required. Start with 1 million free tokens.