{ "title": "Qwen Alternatives 2027: 15 Paid, Free & Open-Source", "url": "https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/qwen/", "summary": "The best Qwen alternatives in 2027 are Claude (best overall, $20/mo), Gemini (best free plan) and Ollama (best open source, MIT). Qwen: API billed pay-as-you-go per token; no flat monthly plan price. Zekai checked these prices on vendor pages on 13 Nov 2026; 12 more are compared below, including 5 with a free plan and 5 open source.", "tool": { "name": "Qwen", "starting_price": "API billed pay-as-you-go per token; no flat monthly plan price.", "free_plan": "1M free tokens per model (Singapore, 90 days)", "price_checked": "2026-11-13", "pricing_url": "https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/model-pricing" }, "task": "LLM / foundation model", "prices_checked": "2026-11-13", "date_modified": "2026-11-13", "alternatives": [ { "name": "Claude", "type": "Free plan + paid", "starting_price": "$20/mo", "free_plan_limit": "Limited usage every 5 hours and every week", "best_for": "Careful writing and agentic coding", "difference": "Closed-weight models only, via a $20 monthly chat plan or an API at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens for Sonnet 5.5; Qwen publishes open weights.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://claude.com/pricing", "website": "https://claude.ai", "zekai_score": 9.4, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/claude/" }, { "name": "Mistral AI", "type": "Free plan + paid", "starting_price": "$14.99/mo", "free_plan_limit": "Limited messages, web searches and coding sessions", "best_for": "European provider with chat and API", "difference": "Le Chat Pro costs $14.99 a month, and Mistral Large is listed at $0.5 input and $1.5 output per million tokens with 50% batch discounts and OCR billed per 1,000 pages.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://mistral.ai/pricing", "website": "https://mistral.ai", "zekai_score": 9.1, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/mistral-ai/" }, { "name": "ChatGPT", "type": "Free plan + paid", "starting_price": "$20/mo", "best_for": "General assistant with API and Codex", "difference": "API list price is $2 input and $10 output per million tokens for gpt-6.1-sol, and $0.10 / $0.50 for gpt-6-luna; no model usage is free on the API pricing page.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/pricing", "website": "https://chatgpt.com", "zekai_score": 9.3, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/chatgpt/" }, { "name": "Gemini", "type": "Free", "starting_price": "Free plan; paid price not published", "free_plan_limit": "Free tier on Flash and 2.5 Pro models; Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview not free", "best_for": "Free API tier from Google", "difference": "The Gemini API has a free tier for Flash and 2.5 Pro models, but free-tier content may be used to improve Google products; Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview is paid at $2.00 / $12.00.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing", "website": "https://gemini.google.com", "zekai_score": 8.7, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/gemini/" }, { "name": "DeepSeek", "type": "Free", "starting_price": "Free plan; paid price not published", "free_plan_limit": "Web and app chat; no limit stated", "best_for": "Low-cost open-weight API", "difference": "Peak and off-peak pricing: deepseek-flash costs $0.30 input and $1.20 output per million tokens at peak and half that off-peak, with a 1M-token context and up to 384K output.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing", "website": "https://www.deepseek.com", "zekai_score": 8.9, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/deepseek/" }, { "name": "Together AI", "type": "Paid", "starting_price": "Not checked", "free_plan_limit": "No free plan", "best_for": "Host and fine-tune Qwen and other open models", "difference": "Hosts Qwen models itself (Qwen3.7-Max $2.50 / $7.50 per 1M) and lists fine-tuning from $0.34 per million tokens, with dedicated endpoints and GPU clusters for scale.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://www.together.ai/pricing", "website": "https://www.together.ai", "zekai_score": 9.1, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/together-ai/" }, { "name": "OpenRouter", "type": "Free", "starting_price": "Free plan; paid price not published", "free_plan_limit": "25+ free models, 4 free providers, 50 requests per day", "best_for": "One API across many providers", "difference": "A router rather than a model maker: 25+ free models and 50 free requests a day on the Free plan, and a 5.5% platform fee on Standard, with BYOK free up to $25,000 of monthly list-price inference.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://openrouter.ai/pricing", "website": "https://openrouter.ai", "zekai_score": 9.3, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/openrouter/" }, { "name": "Kimi (Moonshot AI)", "type": "Paid", "starting_price": "Not checked", "free_plan_limit": "No free plan", "best_for": "Long-context open-weight models", "difference": "Kimi K3 models have 1,048,576-token context windows and K2 models 262,144; batch calls on kimi-k3 and kimi-k3.1-pro are billed at 60% of standard price.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat", "website": "https://platform.kimi.ai" }, { "name": "GLM (Z.ai)", "type": "Free", "starting_price": "Free plan; paid price not published", "free_plan_limit": "Free models: GLM-4.7-Flash, GLM-4.5-Flash, GLM-4.6V-Flash", "best_for": "Chinese API with free Flash models", "difference": "Three models are free on the pricing page (GLM-4.7-Flash, GLM-4.5-Flash, GLM-4.6V-Flash), and GLM-5.3 costs $1.40 input and $4.40 output per million tokens.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://docs.z.ai/guides/overview/pricing", "website": "https://z.ai" }, { "name": "Ollama", "type": "Open source", "starting_price": "$20/mo (hosted)", "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)", "licence": "MIT", "best_for": "Run Qwen models locally", "difference": "Runs Qwen models locally for free (library lists qwen3.8 27b, qwen3.5 up to 122b, qwen3-coder 480b); an optional cloud Pro plan is $20 a month or $16.67 billed yearly.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "pricing_url": "https://ollama.com/pricing", "website": "https://ollama.com", "repository": "https://github.com/ollama/ollama", "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/ollama/", "commercial_use": "Yes (MIT); each downloaded model carries its own licence.", "runs_on": "macOS, Windows or Linux; memory needs follow the model size.", "setup": "easy: Install the app, then pull a model with one command.", "github_stars": 186883, "stars_checked": "2026-11-13", "last_commit": "2026-11-12", "last_release": "2026-11-10", "zekai_score": 9.1, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/ollama/" }, { "name": "llamafile", "type": "Open source", "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)", "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)", "licence": "Apache-2.0", "best_for": "Single-file local model runner", "difference": "Packages a model and llama.cpp into one executable that runs on most operating systems without installation; includes whisperfile for speech-to-text.", "price_checked": "2026-11-12", "website": "https://github.com/mozilla-ai/llamafile", "repository": "https://github.com/mozilla-ai/llamafile", "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/llamafile/", "commercial_use": "Yes (Apache-2.0); the bundled model keeps its own licence.", "runs_on": "Most operating systems; Windows cannot run executables over 4GB.", "setup": "easy: Download one file and run it; no install step.", "github_stars": 26632, "stars_checked": "2026-11-13", "last_commit": "2026-11-05", "last_release": "2026-09-15", "zekai_score": 7.4, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/llamafile/" }, { "name": "Qwen3 open weights", "type": "Open source", "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)", "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)", "licence": "Apache-2.0 (model weights; repo has no LICENSE file)", "best_for": "Self-hosting Qwen's own Apache-2.0 models", "difference": "Qwen3 weights from 0.6B to 235B-A22B, dense and mixture-of-experts, under Apache 2.0; you download and serve them yourself, so there is no per-token bill but you supply the compute.", "price_checked": "2026-11-13", "website": "https://qwenlm.github.io", "repository": "https://github.com/QwenLM/Qwen3", "commercial_use": "Yes; the README says all open-weight models are licensed under Apache 2.0.", "runs_on": "Sizes from 0.6B to 235B-A22B; memory needs rise with model size.", "setup": "hard: Download weights and serve them with vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp or Ollama.", "github_stars": 27729, "stars_checked": "2026-11-13", "last_commit": "2026-01-09" }, { "name": "llama.cpp", "type": "Open source", "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)", "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)", "licence": "MIT", "best_for": "Core engine for running GGUF models locally", "difference": "C/C++ inference engine with a built-in OpenAI-compatible server that runs GGUF models, including Qwen, on Apple silicon, NVIDIA, AMD GPUs or CPU alone.", "price_checked": "2026-11-13", "website": "https://llama.app", "repository": "https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp", "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/llama-cpp/", "commercial_use": "Yes (MIT); each GGUF model keeps its own licence.", "runs_on": "Apple silicon, NVIDIA (CUDA), AMD (HIP) GPUs, or plain CPU.", "setup": "easy: Install script or prebuilt binary, then one command serves a model.", "github_stars": 134856, "stars_checked": "2026-11-13", "last_commit": "2026-11-13", "last_release": "2026-11-13", "zekai_score": 8.3, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/llama-cpp/" }, { "name": "vLLM", "type": "Open source", "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)", "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)", "licence": "Apache-2.0", "best_for": "High-throughput GPU serving of open models", "difference": "A serving engine built around PagedAttention and continuous batching with an OpenAI-compatible server, aimed at throughput for many requests rather than one local chat session.", "price_checked": "2026-11-13", "website": "https://vllm.ai", "repository": "https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm", "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/vllm/", "commercial_use": "Yes (Apache-2.0); each model keeps its own licence.", "runs_on": "NVIDIA, AMD or Intel GPUs, or x86, ARM and PowerPC CPUs.", "setup": "hard: GPU drivers, model downloads and serving flags to tune.", "github_stars": 96868, "stars_checked": "2026-11-13", "last_commit": "2026-11-13", "last_release": "2026-11-02", "zekai_score": 7.8, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/vllm/" }, { "name": "LocalAI", "type": "Open source", "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)", "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)", "licence": "MIT", "best_for": "One OpenAI-compatible server for many model types", "difference": "Drop-in OpenAI, Anthropic and ElevenLabs-compatible server that runs LLMs, vision, voice, image and video models on NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple silicon, Vulkan or CPU-only.", "price_checked": "2026-11-13", "website": "https://localai.io", "repository": "https://github.com/mudler/LocalAI", "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/localai/", "commercial_use": "Yes (MIT); each model keeps its own licence.", "runs_on": "Any hardware, including CPU-only; GPU builds for NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple.", "setup": "moderate: Docker command, then backends and models download on demand.", "github_stars": 50353, "stars_checked": "2026-11-13", "last_commit": "2026-11-13", "last_release": "2026-10-23", "zekai_score": 8.4, "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/localai/" } ], "faq": [ { "q": "What is the best alternative to Qwen in 2027?", "a": "Claude is the best overall Qwen alternative on this page ($20/mo). For no cost, Gemini has a free plan (Free tier on Flash and 2.5 Pro models; Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview not free). To self-host, Ollama is open source (MIT)." }, { "q": "Is there a free version of Qwen?", "a": "Yes. Qwen has a free plan: 1M free tokens per model (Singapore, 90 days). Paid plans start at API billed pay-as-you-go per token; no flat monthly plan price., checked on 13 Nov 2026." }, { "q": "Is there a 100% free alternative to Qwen?", "a": "Yes. Ollama, llamafile, Qwen3 open weights, llama.cpp, vLLM, LocalAI are open source and free to self-host. Claude, Mistral AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, GLM (Z.ai) have a free plan with limits, shown in the table." }, { "q": "How much do Qwen alternatives cost for a team of 5?", "a": "If each of 5 people buys the entry paid plan, at the prices Zekai checked on 13 Nov 2026, the monthly cost is Mistral AI $74.95/mo, Claude $100/mo, ChatGPT $100/mo. Team and business plans can cost more per seat. The Zekai Cost Finder on this page recalculates for any team size." }, { "q": "Which is better, Claude or Qwen?", "a": "Closed-weight models only, via a $20 monthly chat plan or an API at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens for Sonnet 5.5; Qwen publishes open weights. Choose Claude if you want a flat monthly chat subscription with Claude Code included and no weights to host. Stay with Qwen if you need downloadable weights, Apache-2.0 models you can fine-tune, or the cheapest Singapore API rates." }, { "q": "Why are people leaving Qwen?", "a": "The documented reasons are: Free API quotas apply only in Singapore, expire 90 days after activation or model release, and are not offered in other regions (7 Nov 2026); The same pricing page lists different prices by region: qwen3.8-max is $2 / $6 per million tokens in Singapore and $1.65 / $4.951 in China (Beijing), and Singapore qwen3.7-plus carries a limited-time 20% discount (7 Nov 2026). Each is sourced in the section above." }, { "q": "Qwen vs DeepSeek: which is better?", "a": "Both publish open weights and low per-token API prices. Qwen offers more sizes and a free Singapore quota; DeepSeek has peak and off-peak pricing and a 1M-token context. Match the model to your task and region." } ], "publisher": "Zekai (zekaiwork.com) — independently reviewed; prices read on vendor pages on the dates shown.", "licence": "Free to quote with a link to https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/qwen/. Bulk copying or republishing the dataset is not permitted." }