Screenshots
Qwen Chat
Alibaba's free assistant on Qwen3.8-Max
Enki editor score
Great
Human-vetted editorial rating
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Overview
Qwen Chat is Alibaba's consumer assistant for its Qwen model family. The model picker offers Qwen3.8-Max, the flagship, alongside Qwen3.7-Plus and the omnimodal Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash, and the app adds web search, Deep Research, image and video generation and a Web Dev mode that builds a page from a prompt. It is free to use on the web, iOS, Android, macOS and Windows. Developers can download many Qwen models, such as Qwen3.8-27B under Apache 2.0, or pay per token for the API through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio.
Enki verdict
A capable free assistant with real desktop apps and open-weight models behind it, let down by Alibaba publishing neither usage limits nor subscription prices.
Key features
Model picker
Switch between Qwen3.8-Max, Qwen3.7-Plus and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash.
Deep Research
Multi-step web searches that return a written report.
Image and video
Generate and edit images, or make videos, from a prompt.
Pros & cons
What we like
- Free access to the Qwen3.8-Max flagship
- Apps for web, mobile, macOS and Windows
- Many models downloadable under Apache 2.0
Worth noting
- No published message limits or subscription prices
- Trains on de-identified chats unless you email to opt out
Qwen pricing
Is Qwen free?
Yes. Qwen Chat is free on web, mobile and desktop, including the Qwen3.8-Max flagship, and Qwen publishes no message quota.
- No published message cap; Qwen's terms say each plan has a usage allowance
- Model choice of Qwen3.8-Max, Qwen3.7-Plus and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash
- Deep Research, web search, Web Dev, and image and video generation
- For users aged 18 and over only
Qwen Chat
Free
- Qwen3.8-Max, Qwen3.7-Plus and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash
- Web, iOS, Android, macOS and Windows
- Deep Research, image and video generation
API: qwen3.8-max
$2 in, $6 out
per million tokens, International deployment, up to 1M tokens a request; 1 million free tokens for 90 days in Singapore
- Thinking and non-thinking modes
- Context caching discount
API: qwen3.7-plus
$0.40 in, $1.60 out
per million tokens list price up to 256K tokens a request; limited-time 20% off
- Thinking output billed at $1.60 per million tokens
- Up to 1M tokens a request at a higher tier
Price history
- Checked against chat.qwen.ai, qwen.ai and Alibaba Cloud Model Studio's pricing page: Qwen Chat is free with Qwen3.8-Max, Qwen3.7-Plus and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash; API qwen3.8-max is $2 in and $6 out per million tokens. No public price list for the paid subscription tiers named in Qwen's terms.
Source: Qwen's official pricing, checked Nov 4, 2026. Prices can change; confirm at checkout.
Qwen FAQ
- Is Qwen free?
- Yes. Qwen Chat is free on the web, iOS, Android, macOS and Windows, including the flagship Qwen3.8-Max model. Qwen's terms mention paid subscription plans, but Qwen publishes no prices for them, and only the developer API is clearly paid, per token.
- Is Qwen open source?
- Many Qwen models are open-weight. Qwen3.8-27B is on Hugging Face under the Apache 2.0 license, and the flagship's open checkpoint, Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B, ships under its own Qwen3.8-Max license. The hosted Qwen3.8-Max in Qwen Chat adds vision input, a non-thinking mode and a one million token context by default.
- Is Qwen safe to use?
- Qwen's privacy policy says the service is run by a Singapore company, and that it collects, processes and stores personal data in Singapore, with AI requests processed by Alibaba Cloud (Singapore). It may use de-identified chats and feedback to train its models; you can opt out by emailing privacy@qwen.com, though feedback you give is still used. The service is for users aged 18 and over.
- Which models does Qwen Chat use?
- Qwen Chat offers Qwen3.8-Max, which Qwen calls its flagship, Qwen3.7-Plus, the default, and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash, a native multimodal model that takes text, images, audio and video. You pick the model from the menu at the top of a chat.
- Qwen vs DeepSeek: which is better?
- Both are free chat apps from Chinese labs that publish open-weight models. Qwen Chat adds image and video generation and desktop apps, and its policy stores data in Singapore, while DeepSeek's policy stores data in China. DeepSeek's open models use the MIT license; Qwen's mix Apache 2.0 with custom licenses.
- How much does the Qwen API cost?
- On Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, qwen3.8-max costs $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens on the International deployment. New users in the Singapore region get 1 million free tokens per model for 90 days.
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