Qwen
Foundation Models · Free
Alibaba's high-performance open-weights language model
At a glance
- Made by
- Qwen Team
- Korean
- None (English and a few others only)
- API
- Yes
- Available on
- Web, API
- GitHub
- 27,665 stars
What is Qwen?
Qwen is a family of large language models built by the Qwen team. The latest Qwen3-2507 comes in two variants, Instruct and Thinking, and three sizes: 235B-A22B, 30B-A3B, and 4B. It improves instruction following, logical reasoning, math, science, coding, and tool use, understands a long context of 256K tokens, and can be extended up to 1 million tokens. Checkpoints can be downloaded from Hugging Face and ModelScope, run locally with llama.cpp, Ollama, or LM Studio, or deployed with SGLang, vLLM, or TGI. The blog also introduces the image generation model Qwen-Image, the image editing model Qwen-Image-Edit, the safety classification model Qwen3Guard, and the translation model Qwen-MT.
- Two variants: Qwen3-Instruct-2507 and Qwen3-Thinking-2507
- Understands a 256K-token long context, extendable up to 1 million tokens
- Run locally with llama.cpp, Ollama, or LM Studio
- GPTQ, AWQ, and GGUF quantization guidance
- Qwen-Image image generation and Qwen-Image-Edit image editing
- Qwen3Guard prompt and response safety classification
- Qwen-MT translation in 92 languages (Qwen API)
Who uses Qwen and for what
- Developers deploying Qwen models locally or on large-scale inference servers
- Using Qwen in application frameworks such as RAG and agents
Pricing
Open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go
Weights released free as open source, Alibaba Cloud API is pay-as-you-go
Checked against official information. Prices can change, so check the official site again before paying.
Combos that work well with Qwen
From change detection to publishing after approval
Qwen links changes in official URLs to DB records. In Make, difference summaries, review requests, and publishing jobs are orchestrated in order. External publishing and sending are blocked until a person approves.
Cost: Brain: open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go / Tool: freemium (free + paid subscription)
Self-hosted operations workflow
Qwen connects collection, classification, approval, and audit logs into a single flow. In n8n, secrets, permissions, and retry rules are separated by environment. Failed jobs leave the original text and the error reason in the review queue.
Cost: Brain: open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go / Tool: freemium (free + paid subscription)
Parser, crawler, and test code
Qwen implements parsers that match changes in each site's HTML, JSON-LD, and API responses. In Cursor, unit tests verify the extraction of price, limit, and currency fields. Rules for robots, terms of service, and request rate are reflected in the code.
Cost: Brain: open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go / Tool: freemium (free + paid subscription)
Structuring official documents and pricing pages
Qwen structures the body text, links, and metadata of public official pages. In Firecrawl, the source URL, collection time, and page title are kept in each record. Targets that do not comply with terms of service, robots, or access restrictions are excluded.
Cost: Brain: open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go / Tool: freemium (free + paid subscription)
Pricing data normalization and quality testing
Qwen converts source fields into a model of plan, currency, billing cycle, and limits. In dbt, tests check for duplicate, NULL, relationship, and range errors. Transformation history and documentation make it possible to trace where each number came from.
Cost: Brain: open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go / Tool: open source + paid managed cloud plan
State-based review agent
Qwen specifies the state transitions for collection, extraction, comparison, and approval. In LangGraph, failure, hold, and re-review paths are kept in the job log. A human approval node is required before automatic publishing.
Cost: Brain: open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go / Tool: open source (free)
Tool-calling pricing update agent
Qwen separates agent roles into collection, extraction, verification, and reporting. In OpenAI Agents SDK, the result of each tool call is recorded with a structured schema. The publishing tool is not called without complete sources and approval.
Cost: Brain: open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go / Tool: open source (free)
Official pricing comparison page and change alerts
Qwen collects public official pricing pages and extracts them into plan, currency, billing cycle, and limit fields. In the Firecrawl + dbt + n8n combo, dbt tests filter out missing, duplicate, and abnormal values and compare them with previous values. n8n sends the source URL and a summary of differences to a reviewer, and publishes only after approval.
Cost: Open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go / Freemium (free + paid subscription) / Open source + paid managed cloud plan
AI tools similar to Qwen (alternatives)
Qwen vs. alternatives at a glance
| AI | Pricing | Combos on the map | Connected tools | Free | Cheapest monthly | Korean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen | Free | 75 | 5 | — | — | No |
| Gemini | Free + paid | 81 | 16 | Yes | — | Yes |
| Claude | Free + paid | 83 | 16 | Yes | $20/mo | Yes |
| Command R+ | Free | 30 | 16 | — | — | Yes |
| DeepSeek-V2 | Free | 0 | 16 | — | — | No |
2 of these 5 tools have a free plan. Cheapest paid plan: Claude ($20/mo).
Combo and connection counts are based on the relationships recorded on AI Galaxy Map (2026-10-26); they are not a quality ranking.
Qwen on AI Galaxy Map
- One of 60 AI tools in the Foundation Models field.
- Connected to 5 other tools — #16 in its field.
- Part of 75 work combos recorded on the map.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use Qwen for free?
Open source (free) + Alibaba Cloud API pay-as-you-go. Prices can change, so check the official site before paying.
What works well with Qwen?
Based on the combos on the map, there is a workflow such as "From change detection to publishing after approval" that uses it together with Make.
What AI can I use instead of Qwen?
Tools that do the same job, such as Gemini, Claude, Command R+, DeepSeek-V2, are connected to it on the map.
Can I use Qwen in Korean?
None (English and a few others only)
Sources (official pages)
Checked on the official pages on 2026-10-14. Prices and features can change, so check the official site again before paying.