Qwen is the model family from Alibaba Cloud (China) published with open weights, covering language, code, math and multimodal versions with image, audio and video. It is one of the most used open families outside the Western world.
What it does
- Running language and code models locally
- Multimodal applications with image, audio and video on compatible versions
- Fine-tuning on your own data
- Use via API on Alibaba Cloud or platforms that host the model
Models and license
- Several published families: language (Qwen), coding, math and vision
- Open weights under permissive licenses (check each version)
- Models also hosted on Alibaba Cloud and partner providers
Pricing
- Free download of the weights (subject to license)
- Pay-as-you-go API on Alibaba Cloud
- Cost of your own infrastructure for local use
Strengths
- Broad modality coverage in the family
- Active community and integrations in open source tools
- Competitive cost on Alibaba Cloud
Points of attention
- Company based in China: review data policies
- Quality varies between sizes and versions
- Documentation is spread across different projects