Qwen Chat

Alibaba's free chatbot, with open-weight models.

4.3FreeChatbots Coding

Data verified on 22 July 2026

Visit Qwen Chat →

Price: Free web chat with no caps. Open models under Apache 2.0; Alibaba Cloud API is pay-as-you-go.

Platforms: Web · iOS · Android

Free plan

API available

Open source

Available in Spanish

We review pricing and features regularly, but check them on the official site before subscribing. How we review.

What is Qwen Chat?

Qwen Chat is Alibaba's assistant and one of the major open alternatives on the market: its web interface is free with no usage caps, and much of its model family is published under the Apache 2.0 licence, so anyone can download and run them with no royalties. It is especially strong at reasoning, maths and coding.

Pros

Completely free web chat with no message limits
Open-weight models under Apache 2.0, free for commercial use
Very strong at reasoning, maths and code
Specialised variants (Coder, reasoning, multimodal)

Cons

The newest models (3.7 series) are API-only, with no open weights
Chinese company: its data policy raises concerns in corporate settings
Smaller ecosystem of apps and integrations than ChatGPT

What Qwen Chat is like in practice

Where it stands out

It offers a very complete family of open models, with versions in different sizes you can download and run on your own infrastructure. That flexibility — from a small model on a laptop to a large one on a server — few alternatives have, and its multilingual performance is above average.

Where it falls short

As a cloud service it carries the same issue as its Chinese peers: data is processed outside the EU and that constrains professional use with third-party information. And there is little product around the chat: none of the integrations or app ecosystem of the Western assistants.

How its pricing works

The chat is free and the open models carry no licence cost: if you have hardware or rent a server, the cost per use is the machine and nothing else. It is one of the cheapest routes to building AI into your own product without depending on a third party's per-token pricing.

Is Qwen Chat right for you?

Yes, if…

You want a capable chat with no message limits and no cost, or you need open-weight models under Apache 2.0 to use commercially on your own infrastructure.

No, if…

Your company has a strict data policy: it is a Chinese company. And if you want integrations and apps, its ecosystem lags well behind ChatGPT's.

Frequently asked questions

Is Qwen Chat free?

Yes, the web interface is free with no usage caps. You only pay for the Alibaba Cloud API if you integrate it into your own products.

Are its models open source?

Much of the family is, under the Apache 2.0 licence, which allows commercial use with no royalties. The newest 3.7 series models are API-only for now.

Qwen or DeepSeek?

Both are Chinese, free and open. DeepSeek stands out at pure reasoning; Qwen offers more specialised variants and multimodal options.