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Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B
▲ HOT◆ OPEN
by Alibaba
OPEN WEIGHTSLOCALAPILONG CONTEXTPAIDCLOSED
RANKED #1 OF 8 CODE · OVERALL #56 OF 6,618 · VIBE SCORE 6.6 · 415 VOICES
Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct is a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) code generation model developed by the Qwen team. It is optimized for agentic coding tasks such as function calling, tool use, and long-context reasoning over...
HAPPY9.5
35 mentions
SAD5.5
13 mentions
VIBE TRAJECTORY
26 weeks · 451 voices
QUIETLY DEGRADING
Recent vibe and chatter are both sliding.
HOW TO USE IT
Open weights. You can use a hosted service, or download it and run it yourself, free.
RUN IT ON YOUR OWN MACHINE
Open weights: download Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B once and it's yours. No subscription, no rate limits, works offline.
480B total parameters (35B active MoE), a Q4_K_M quant is about 280 GB while FP16 is around 960 GB
- BARE MINIMUM
Apple Mac Studio M2 Ultra (192GB Unified Memory) + SSD swap
192 GB UNIFIED MEMORY
~$5,000 USEDModel is too massive for consumer GPUs; runs heavily quantized Q2/Q3 with partial SSD paging at sub-5 tok/s, limited con
- SWEET SPOT
Workstation with 6x NVIDIA RTX 3090 (24GB) via PCIe risers
144 GB VRAM + 256 GB SYSTEM DDR5 RAM
~$6,200 USEDQ4_K_M split across GPUs and system RAM via llama.cpp, ~8 to 12 tok/s, 16k context
- FULL POWER
Custom multi-GPU rig with 8x NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24GB) or 4x RT
192 GB TO 384 GB VRAM
~$16,000 TO $28,000Q4 or Q8 quant fully resident in VRAM, 25 tok/s, full 256k context window
LEARN HOW TO SET IT UP
WILL MY BOX RUN QWEN3 CODER 480B A35B?
The three cards above are researched picks. Search the machine you actually have — we only say yes if it should reply at a usable speed, not just load the weights and crawl.
HARDWARE PICKS & PRICES ARE RESEARCHED FROM THE LIVE WEB AND REFRESHED AUTOMATICALLY. TREAT THEM AS BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH IT?
Everyday jobs on each of those rigs: how long Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B takes, and how good the crowd says it is at that kind of work.
| THE JOB | BARE MINIMUMApple Mac Studio M2 Ultra (192GB Unified Memory) + SSD swap | SWEET SPOTWorkstation with 6x NVIDIA RTX 3090 (24GB) via PCIe risers | FULL POWERCustom multi-GPU rig with 8x NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24GB) or 4x RT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write an emaila paragraph or two, drafted from a one-line brief | ~1.7 MIN★★★★★ | ~50 S★★★★★ | ~20 S★★★★★ |
| Summarize a documenta long report boiled down to the points that matter | ~5 MIN★★★★★ | ~2.5 MIN★★★★★ | ~60 S★★★★★ |
| Build a websitea small landing page, markup and styles together | ~27 MIN★★★★★ | ~13 MIN★★★★★ | ~5.3 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a backendan API with routes, storage and tests | ~83 MIN★★★★★ | ~42 MIN★★★★★ | ~17 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a gamea playable browser game in one file | ~50 MIN★★★★★ | ~25 MIN★★★★★ | ~10 MIN★★★★★ |
STARS ARE THE COMMUNITY SCORE FOR THAT KIND OF WORK, DOCKED FOR HOW SQUASHED THE WEIGHTS GET AT EACH TIER. TIMES ARE COMPUTED FROM RESEARCHED SPEEDS. BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT THE INTERNET SAYS
People are mostly happy with Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B. Biggest praise: help with code. Biggest gripe: working when you need it.
364 POSTS · 51 COMMENTS · BLUESKY · GITHUB · REDDIT · LEMMY · X · BLOG · DEV FORUMS
PEOPLE LOVE
- Popular for coding help (7 mentions)
- Answers come back fast (3 mentions)
- People feel it is worth the money (3 mentions)
- Usually gives correct answers (2 mentions)
PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT
- Outages, errors, or limits get in the way (2 mentions)
TOPIC BY TOPIC
- Help with codeMOSTLY POSITIVE
7 thumbs up · 3 thumbs down
- SpeedPEOPLE LOVE THIS
3 thumbs up · 0 thumbs down
- PricePEOPLE LOVE THIS
3 thumbs up · 0 thumbs down
- Getting facts rightMOSTLY POSITIVE
2 thumbs up · 1 thumbs down
- Working when you need itA SORE SPOT
1 thumbs up · 2 thumbs down
LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE?
Checked picks first: tags say why you would switch, stars say how fully each one stands in for Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B.
Grok Code
Codestral
Deepseek Coder> SOURCES (12)
- REDDIT · 2026-04-08 · 609 UPVOTES30 Days of an LLM Honeypot
30 Days of an LLM Honeypot
- REDDIT · 2025-07-23 · 529 UPVOTESChina is winning the AI race for coding while being open source
China is winning the AI race for coding while being open source
- REDDIT · 2025-07-23 · 407 UPVOTESClaude Code Competitor Just Dropped and it’s Open Source
Claude Code Competitor Just Dropped and it’s Open Source
- REDDIT · 2026-01-25 · 385 UPVOTESOllama Models Ranked by VRAM Requirements
Ollama Models Ranked by VRAM Requirements
- REDDIT · 2025-07-22 · 188 UPVOTESAlibaba releases Qwen3-Coder
Alibaba releases Qwen3-Coder
- REDDIT · 2025-07-31 · 164 UPVOTESqwen3-coder is here
qwen3-coder is here
- REDDIT · 2026-02-03 · 164 UPVOTESAlibaba releases Qwen3-Coder-Next model with benchmarks
Alibaba releases Qwen3-Coder-Next model with benchmarks
- REDDIT · 2025-07-24 · 140 UPVOTESQwen3 Coder (free) is now available on OpenRouter. Go nuts.
Qwen3 Coder (free) is now available on OpenRouter. Go nuts.
- REDDIT · 2026-04-07 · 135 UPVOTESI ran Gemma 4 26B vs Qwen 3.5 27B across 18 real local business tests on my RTX 4090. Gemma won 13 to 5.
I ran Gemma 4 26B vs Qwen 3.5 27B across 18 real local business tests on my RTX 4090. Gemma won 13 to 5.
- X · 2026-08-23 · 104 UPVOTESYou're paying $20/month for a coding agent that runs one model. Here's a free one that runs any of them. The coding-agen
You're paying $20/month for a coding agent that runs one model. Here's a free one that runs any of them. The coding-agen
- REDDIT · 2025-08-07 · 95 UPVOTESGPT-5 releases in <15 hours. How do you think it will compare to Claude Opus?
GPT-5 releases in <15 hours. How do you think it will compare to Claude Opus?
- REDDIT · 2026-04-13 · 92 UPVOTESQwen 3.5 27B/35BA3B Tool Calling Issues: Why It Breaks & How I Fixed It
Qwen 3.5 27B/35BA3B Tool Calling Issues: Why It Breaks & How I Fixed It