Alibaba Cloud console showing Qwen 3.6 Plus token usage and billing details

Using Qwen 3.6 Plus: Great but a Bit Expensive

I Think Qwen 3.6 Plus Has Strong Coding Capabilities, But My Costs Are Higher Than Expected I compared two approaches: 1、Using Qwen 3.6 Plus to write large-scale C# programs, then having DeepSeek v4 Pro conduct code reviews; 2、Using DeepSeek v4 Pro to write large-scale C# programs, then having Qwen 3.6 Plus conduct code reviews. I prefer the second approach for these reasons: 1、DeepSeek v4 Pro supports a context length of up to 1 million tokens. For large projects, this helps maintain clear logical connections between modules. Additionally, DeepSeek v4 Pro is currently more affordable (until May 31, 2026, it’s offered at 25% of the regular price—see screenshots in my previous blog). 2、Qwen 3.6 Plus delivers higher code quality but at a higher cost. Using it only for code reviews helps reduce overall expenses. ...

May 22, 2026 · 2 min · 389 words · Hummingbird Labs
DeepSeek platform showing token usage breakdown and cost for AI coding sessions

DeepSeek v4 Pro, Qwen 3.6 Plus, or Others: Which Should I Use?

i like deepseek and Qwen Before May 2026, I had never used DeepSeek, Qwen 3.6 Plus, or any other Chinese LLMs for programming. As readers of my previous blog might recall, I primarily relied on GitHub Copilot’s models, favoring Claude Sonnet 3.6 and Claude Opus 4.7 (a bit pricey—if you’re wealthy, pretend I didn’t say that). My secondary choice was GPT Codex 5.3. So when I first considered using DeepSeek or Qwen 3.6 Plus, I was skeptical—worried their code quality wouldn’t meet my standards. ...

May 21, 2026 · 2 min · 403 words · Hummingbird Labs