Overview
ModelScope Community is an AI model open-source community launched by Alibaba DAMO Academy, positioned as the 'Chinese version of Hugging Face'. It brings together thousands of open-source AI models covering text, image, speech, multimodal, and other fields, and provides free model experience, download, and online inference services.
ModelScope Community is particularly suitable for Chinese AI developers—it is friendly to domestic networks, has fast model download speeds, and its documentation and community communication are primarily in Chinese.
**📌 2026 Update**: ModelScope Community has synchronized all mainstream open-source models from Alibaba's Qwen series—**Qwen3 Family** (Qwen3.5-Plus / Qwen3-Max-Thinking / Qwen3-Coder-Next for coding, etc.) + **MiMo-7B** (Xiaomi open-source version) + **Step1X-Edit** (image editing) + **ACE-Step** (music large model) + **Kimi-Audio-7B** and over 2000 other models. Additionally, the **Qwen3.8** (2.4 trillion parameters, officially described as 'second only to Anthropic Fable 5') previewed on 2026/7/19 will also debut on ModelScope. It is the primary hub for open-source AI model distribution in China.
Key Features
- Vast Model Library: Thousands of open-source models covering NLP, CV, audio, multimodal, etc.
- Online Experience: Experience model effects directly on the web without local deployment
- Model Download: Domestic high-speed download channels, fast and stable
- Notebook Environment: Free GPU environment for model fine-tuning and experiments
- Datasets: Rich open-source dataset resources
- Chinese Ecosystem: Chinese documentation, community discussions, and technical support
Use Cases
- Download and use open-source AI models
- High-speed download of models from Hugging Face within China
- Online experience and evaluation of AI models
- Model fine-tuning and training experiments
- Learning and exchange for AI developers
Pros
- Domestic high-speed download: Fast and stable model downloads
- Free GPU resources: Provides Notebook environment
- Rich models: Full coverage of mainstream open-source models
- Chinese-friendly: Documentation and community primarily in Chinese
- Online experience: Try models without local deployment
Pricing
ModelScope Community's basic features are completely free, including model browsing, downloading, and online experience. The Notebook environment provides free GPU time (with limits). Enterprise-level model services and private deployment are quoted on demand.
Summary
ModelScope Community is the 'home base for domestic AI developers'—fast model downloads, comprehensive Chinese documentation, and free GPU usage. If you are doing AI development in China, ModelScope Community should be your first stop. It complements Hugging Face: use ModelScope domestically, and Hugging Face internationally.