Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) vs Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) (poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free) vs Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 (qwen/qwen3.5-plus-20260420). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) (poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free): Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 (qwen/qwen3.5-plus-20260420) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.15/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) (API ID: poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free) vs Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 (API ID: qwen/qwen3.5-plus-20260420), Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) offers lower standard input pricing at $0/1M tokens ($0/1M output), while Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) leads in cached prefix economics at $0/1M tokens (50% discount). Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) achieves a 0ms faster P90 time-to-first-token latency (280ms vs 280ms).
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
| Specification / FinOps Dimension | Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) | Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free | qwen/qwen3.5-plus-20260420 | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0 / $0 | $0.3 / $1.8 | Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0/1M (50% Off) | $0.15/1M (50% Off) | Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) |
| Context Window / Max Output | 256K In / 32K Out | 977K In / 64K Out | Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 280ms | Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) (-0ms) |
Laguna XS 2.1 is the latest coding agent model in the 33B-A3B category from [Poolside](https://poolside.ai/) and a step forward from their Laguna XS.2 model (released in April 2026
Qwen3.5 Plus (April 2026) is a large-scale multimodal language model from Alibaba. It accepts text, image, and video input and produces text output, with a 1M token context window.
Real-Time Stack Cost & Hidden-Fee Simulator (MAU / Token / Egress / GMV)
Calibrated with Reddit r/FinOps & r/devops telemetry: Includes Context Caching, Bandwidth Egress, and MoR Tax
🛰️Switch from Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) to Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Qwen3.5 Plus (April 2026) is a large-scale multimodal language model from Alibaba. It accepts text, image, and video input and produces text output, with a 1M token context window. Verified P90 latency of 280ms.