Overview
Qwen is a large language model series and AI assistant launched by Alibaba, leading the comprehensive capabilities of domestic large models. It performs well in Chinese understanding, long text processing, logical reasoning, and coding, and the consumer app is completely free.
**Latest flagship: Qwen 3.7-Max** (officially released at the Alibaba Cloud Summit on 2026/05/20), scored 56.6 on the Artificial Analysis global large model leaderboard, **ranking fifth globally and first domestically**, surpassing Kimi-K2.6, DeepSeek-v4-pro, and GLM-5.1, with performance close to the strongest models from GPT, Claude, and Gemini. Designed for the Agent era, it leads in coding, office automation, and long-range autonomous reasoning. The concurrently released **Qwen 3.5-Plus** achieves 'parameter reduction with performance surpassing' through a hybrid attention mechanism, with a 19x improvement in inference throughput and a 60% reduction in deployment cost. The Qwen series has an active open-source ecosystem with tens of millions of global downloads.
Key Features
- Ultra-long Context: Supports a context window of up to 1 million tokens, capable of processing an entire book at once
- Multimodal Understanding: Supports understanding and analysis of text, images, audio, video, and documents
- Web Search: Real-time web search for the latest information, with answers including source links
- Document Analysis: Upload PDF, Word, and other documents for intelligent analysis and Q&A
- Coding Ability: Supports code generation, explanation, and debugging in multiple programming languages, leading in various programming benchmarks
- Open-source Model Ecosystem: The Qwen series models are fully open-source, with tens of millions of global downloads and top community activity
- Hybrid Attention Mechanism (3.5-Plus): New architecture brings 19x improvement in inference throughput and 60% reduction in deployment cost
- Offline Version (Qwen3-Max Offline): Built-in on-device inference in the Qwen App, fully local operation without internet, suitable for basic Q&A and continuation
- Qwen App Super Ecosystem: Fully integrated with Alibaba's ecosystem including Taobao, Alipay, Fliggy, and Amap, enabling AI to directly 'handle tasks'
Use Cases
- Chinese writing, translation, and content creation
- Reading comprehension and summarization of long documents
- Coding assistance and technical Q&A
- Daily information queries and knowledge Q&A
- Base model for enterprise private deployment (open-source version)
- Scenarios requiring offline AI operation (on-device version)
- Deeply integrated e-commerce/travel/payment scenarios within the Alibaba ecosystem
Pros
- Consumer app is completely free, all features at zero cost
- Top-tier Chinese ability: excellent in Chinese understanding and generation
- Ultra-long context: handles long documents with ease up to 1 million tokens
- Open-source ecosystem: active community for Qwen series open-source models, leading global downloads
- Comprehensive multimodal: one-stop for text, images, audio, video, and documents
- 3.5-Plus cost-performance revolution: half the parameters with performance surpassing the previous generation
- Deep Alibaba ecosystem integration: a super app from Q&A to task handling
Pricing
The Qwen App/web version is completely free with unlimited usage. API is billed per token via the Alibaba Cloud Bailian platform: Qwen-Turbo ¥0.3/million tokens, Qwen-Plus ¥0.8/million tokens, Qwen-Max ¥2/million tokens, and 3.5-Plus deployment cost is 60% lower than the previous generation. Open-source models can be deployed locally for free; enterprise private deployment requires separate business negotiation.
Summary
Qwen is the 'benchmark for domestic AI assistants'—free, strong in Chinese, long context, active open-source, with deep integration into the Alibaba ecosystem. In May 2026, Qwen 3.7-Max ranked in the global top five and first domestically on authoritative third-party leaderboards, marking that domestic large models have officially caught up with leading overseas models in flagship capabilities. If your primary scenario is Chinese or you need AI assistance for e-commerce/payments/travel, Qwen is the top choice; for pure English or advanced reasoning, it can complement ChatGPT/Claude.
Version History
- 通义千问发布 Qwen-Image-3.0 图像生成模型，核心关键词为"实" (2026-07-21): Tongyi Qianwen released the third-generation image generation base model Qwen-Image-3.0, with the core keyword being "realistic". This model supports up to 4.5k token instruction input and can generate a 3×3 grid layout containing 9 complex infographics in a single pass; text rendering accuracy reaches 10px, and it supports native rendering in 12 languages, aiming to transform images into deployable productivity tools.
- Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS + Qwen-Image-3.0 (2026-07-21): TTS tops the Artificial Analysis leaderboard, 16 languages, 3-minute long text; Image 3.0 focuses on reality, 4.5k token instructions, 10px text rendering, 12 languages
- Qwen 3.7-Max (2026/05/20): All-purpose base for the Agent era. GPQA Diamond 92.4 (surpassing Opus 4.6 Max's 91.3), HMMT 2026 math evaluation 97.1 (highest overall), HLE 41.4. 1 million token context. Demo: 35 hours of continuous coding, 1158 tool calls, 432 kernel evaluations. API price $2.5/$7.5 per million tokens, cache hit $0.25, less than 1/6 of Opus 4.7. Co-released with Pingtouge Zhenwu M890 AI chip
- Qwen 3.5-Plus (2026/05/20): Hybrid attention mechanism, total parameters 400 billion (smaller than the previous generation's trillion), 19x improvement in inference throughput, 60% reduction in deployment cost
- Qwen 3.6 / Qwen3-Max (2026/04): Topped global API call volume, Max-Preview preview version leads in multiple programming benchmarks; launched offline version for on-device operation
- Qwen 3.x Series (2025-2026): Comprehensive multimodal, open-source versions consistently rank high on global open-source leaderboards
- Qwen 2.x Series (2024): Among the first domestic models to support 1 million token long context, Qwen2-72B fully benchmarks against international flagships
- Qwen 1.0 (2023): First release of Qwen, launching Alibaba's AI strategy