The closest alternative to Qwen3 235B A22B is Nova Premier 1.0 — comparable intelligence (19.0 vs 19.8); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $0.455/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Nova Premier 1.0 is the closest alternative to Qwen3 235B A22B, with an Intelligence Index of 19.0 (Qwen3 235B A22B scores 19.8) at $2.50 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $0.455 for Qwen3 235B A22B, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Qwen3 235B A22B — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.