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Alibaba Cloud (Qwen)

Alibaba Cloud's DashScope API provides OpenAI-compatible access to Qwen language models. Use OpenAI provider options supported by your chosen model.

Setup

To use Alibaba Cloud's API, set the DASHSCOPE_API_KEY environment variable or specify via apiKey in the configuration file:

export DASHSCOPE_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Configuration

The provider uses OpenAI provider options; support varies by model. Example:

providers:
  - alibaba:qwen3.8-max # Simple usage
  - id: alibaba:qwen3.7-plus # Aliases: alicloud:, aliyun:, dashscope:
    config:
      temperature: 0.7
      apiKey: your_api_key_here # Alternative to DASHSCOPE_API_KEY environment variable
      apiBaseUrl: https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1 # Optional: Override default API base URL

:::note

The equivalent provider prefixes are alicloud:, aliyun:, and dashscope:. For new configurations, Alibaba recommends qwen3.7-plus for balanced use, qwen3.8-flash for lower cost, or qwen3.8-max for stronger reasoning. Check the model catalog for your region; model availability differs by region.

If you're using the Alibaba Cloud Beijing region console, switch the base URL to https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1 instead of the international endpoint.

:::

Supported Models

The built-in Alibaba provider implements OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions and text embeddings. The catalog below also lists separate realtime, speech recognition, and image generation services. Listing a model here does not add those endpoints to this provider. Choose a model supported by your selected endpoint and region.

Qwen 3 Flagship

  • qwen3.8-max / qwen3.8-max-0902 - Current flagship with text, image, and video input and a 1M-token context window
  • qwen3.8-flash - Faster Qwen3.8 model with a 1M-token context window
  • qwen3.7-plus / qwen3.7-plus-2026-05-26 - General-purpose model with thinking, vision, and tool calling
  • qwen3.7-flash / qwen3.7-flash-2026-07-15 - Lower-cost Qwen3.7 model
  • qwen3.7-max / qwen3.7-max-2026-06-08 - Previous flagship
  • qwen3.6-plus / qwen3.6-flash and qwen3.5-plus / qwen3.5-flash - Previous model families
  • qwen3-max - Supports reasoning and tool calling
  • qwen3-max-preview - Preview version with thinking mode support
  • qwen3-max-2025-09-23 - September 2025 snapshot
  • qwen-max - 32K context (30,720 in, 8,192 out)
  • qwen-max-latest - Always updated to latest version
  • qwen-max-2025-01-25 - January 2025 snapshot
  • qwen-plus / qwen-plus-latest - 128K-1M context (thinking & non-thinking modes)
  • qwen-plus-2025-09-11, qwen-plus-2025-07-28, qwen-plus-2025-07-14, qwen-plus-2025-04-28, qwen-plus-2025-01-25 - Dated snapshots
  • qwen-flash / qwen-flash-2025-07-28 - Latency-optimized general model
  • qwen-turbo / qwen-turbo-latest / qwen-turbo-2025-04-28 / qwen-turbo-2024-11-01 - Earlier low-latency model; see qwen-flash
  • qwen-long-latest / qwen-long-2025-01-25 - 10M context for long-text analysis, summarization, and extraction

Qwen 3 Omni & Realtime

  • qwen3.8-omni-flash - Text output from text, image, audio, and video input through Chat Completions; use the separate realtime API for qwen3.8-omni-flash-realtime
  • qwen3-omni-flash / qwen3-omni-flash-2025-09-15 - Supports speech and vision in thinking and non-thinking modes
  • qwen3-omni-flash-realtime / qwen3-omni-flash-realtime-2025-09-15 - Streaming realtime with audio stream input and VAD
  • qwen3-omni-30b-a3b-captioner - Dedicated audio captioning model (speech, ambient sounds, music)
  • qwen2.5-omni-7b - Qwen2.5-based multimodal model with text, image, speech, and video inputs

Reasoning & Research

  • qwq-plus - Alibaba's reasoning model (commercial)
  • qwq-32b - Open-source QwQ reasoning model trained on Qwen2.5
  • qwq-32b-preview - Experimental QwQ research model (2024)
  • qwen-deep-research - Long-form research assistant with web search
  • qvq-max / qvq-max-latest / qvq-max-2025-03-25 - Visual reasoning models (commercial)
  • qvq-72b-preview - Experimental visual reasoning research model
  • DeepSeek models (hosted by Alibaba Cloud):
  • deepseek-v4.1-flash / deepseek-v4-pro-0813 - Current hosted Flash and Pro models; these IDs differ from the direct DeepSeek API
  • deepseek-v3.2-exp / deepseek-v3.1 / deepseek-v3 - DeepSeek V3 models
  • deepseek-r1 / deepseek-r1-0528 - DeepSeek reasoning models
  • deepseek-r1-distill-qwen-{1.5b,7b,14b,32b} - Distilled on Qwen2.5
  • deepseek-r1-distill-llama-{8b,70b} - Distilled on Llama

Vision & Multimodal

Commercial:

  • qwen3-vl-plus / qwen3-vl-plus-2025-09-23 - High-res image support with long context (thinking & non-thinking modes)
  • qwen3-vl-flash / qwen3-vl-flash-2025-10-15 - Fast vision model with thinking mode support
  • qwen-vl-max - 7.5K context, 1,280 tokens/image
  • qwen-vl-plus - High-res image support
  • qwen-vl-ocr - OCR-optimized for documents, tables, handwriting (30+ languages)

Open-source:

  • qwen3-vl-235b-a22b-thinking / qwen3-vl-235b-a22b-instruct - 235B parameter Qwen3-VL
  • qwen3-vl-32b-thinking / qwen3-vl-32b-instruct - 32B parameter Qwen3-VL
  • qwen3-vl-30b-a3b-thinking / qwen3-vl-30b-a3b-instruct - 30B parameter Qwen3-VL
  • qwen3-vl-8b-thinking / qwen3-vl-8b-instruct - 8B parameter Qwen3-VL
  • qwen2.5-vl-{72b,7b,3b}-instruct - Qwen 2.5 VL series

Audio & Speech

  • qwen3-asr-flash / qwen3-asr-flash-2025-09-08 - Multilingual speech recognition (11 languages, Chinese dialects)
  • qwen3-asr-flash-realtime / qwen3-asr-flash-realtime-2025-10-27 - Real-time speech recognition with automatic language detection
  • qwen3-omni-flash-realtime - Supports speech streaming with VAD

Coding & Math

Commercial:

  • qwen3-coder-plus / qwen3-coder-plus-2025-09-23 / qwen3-coder-plus-2025-07-22 - Coding agents with tool calling
  • qwen3-coder-flash / qwen3-coder-flash-2025-07-28 - Fast code generation
  • qwen-math-plus / qwen-math-plus-latest / qwen-math-plus-2024-09-19 / qwen-math-plus-2024-08-16 - Math problem solving
  • qwen-math-turbo / qwen-math-turbo-latest / qwen-math-turbo-2024-09-19 - Fast math reasoning
  • qwen-mt-{plus,turbo} - Machine translation (92 languages)
  • qwen-doc-turbo - Document mining and structured extraction

Open-source:

  • qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct / qwen3-coder-30b-a3b-instruct - Open-source Qwen3 coder models
  • qwen2.5-math-{72b,7b,1.5b}-instruct - Math-focused models with CoT/PoT/TIR reasoning

Qwen 2.5 Series

All support 131K context (129,024 in, 8,192 out)

  • qwen2.5-{72b,32b,14b,7b}-instruct
  • qwen2.5-{7b,14b}-instruct-1m

Qwen 2 Series

  • qwen2-72b-instruct - 131K context
  • qwen2-57b-a14b-instruct - 65K context
  • qwen2-7b-instruct - 131K context

Qwen 1.5 Series

8K context (6K in, 2K out)

  • qwen1.5-{110b,72b,32b,14b,7b}-chat

Qwen 3 Open-source Models

Open-source Qwen3 models with thinking mode support:

  • qwen3-next-80b-a3b-thinking / qwen3-next-80b-a3b-instruct - Next-gen 80B (September 2025)
  • qwen3-235b-a22b-thinking-2507 / qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507 - 235B July 2025 versions
  • qwen3-30b-a3b-thinking-2507 / qwen3-30b-a3b-instruct-2507 - 30B July 2025 versions
  • qwen3-235b-a22b - 235B with dual-mode support (thinking/non-thinking)
  • qwen3-32b - 32B dual-mode model
  • qwen3-30b-a3b - 30B dual-mode model
  • qwen3-14b, qwen3-8b, qwen3-4b - Smaller dual-mode models
  • qwen3-1.7b, qwen3-0.6b - Edge/mobile models

Third-party Models

Kimi (Moonshot AI):

  • kimi-k3 - Current Kimi model
  • kimi-k2.6 - Previous Kimi model with a 256K context window
  • moonshot-kimi-k2-instruct - First open-source trillion-parameter MoE model in China (activates 32B parameters)

Z.AI (GLM): ZHIPU/GLM-5.3 and glm-5.2. Check the regional model catalog for access and endpoint requirements.

Embeddings

Use alibaba:embedding:<model> for embeddings. The alibaba:<model> shorthand sends chat requests.

  • text-embedding-v3 - 1,024d vectors, 8,192 token limit, 50+ languages
  • text-embedding-v4 - Latest Qwen3-Embedding with flexible dimensions (64-2048d), 100+ languages
  • qwen3.7-text-embedding - Newer Qwen3.7 text embeddings; availability depends on the region
defaultTest:
  options:
    provider:
      embedding:
        id: alibaba:embedding:text-embedding-v4

Image Generation

The alibaba provider does not call image-generation endpoints. To use models such as qwen-image-plus, configure the HTTP provider for Alibaba's image API.

See the DashScope model catalog for availability.

Additional Configuration

Put DashScope-specific request fields under config.passthrough. For example, enable_thinking controls thinking mode on Qwen3.8 and Qwen3.7 chat models:

providers:
  - id: alibaba:qwen3.8-max
    config:
      passthrough:
        enable_thinking: true

Standard OpenAI parameters (temperature, max_tokens) are supported. Base URL: https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1 (or https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1 for the Beijing region).

For API usage details, see Alibaba Cloud documentation.

See Also

Reference