> Alibaba Cloud Bailian
Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (Bailian, 百炼) is Alibaba Cloud's managed model platform, hosting Qwen and third-party models across text, image, audio and video with pay-as-you-go billing per million tokens in CNY. The cn-beijing list rates on the official price page include qwen-long at 0.5 CNY per million input tokens and 2 CNY per million output tokens, qwq-plus at 1.6 CNY input and 4 CNY output, and deepseek-v3.2-exp at 2 CNY input and 3 CNY output, while international-deployment rates are materially higher (qwq-plus international: 5.871 CNY input, 17.614 CNY output). The price page states it shows list prices only ('原价') and that promotional pricing lives in the console, and pricing is tiered so a single request's token volume sets the unit price for that whole request.
// pros
- Pay-as-you-go per-token billing with published CNY list rates per model and a documented tiered-pricing rule (unit price determined by input tokens in one request).
- First activation of Bailian automatically issues a new-user free inference quota, typically 1,000,000 tokens per model with input and output sharing that total.
- Free quota is available without real-name verification; only continued pay-as-you-go use after the quota is exhausted requires the account to be verified (实名认证).
- A documented stop-when-exhausted switch halts response with HTTP 403 and error code AllocationQuota.FreeTierOnly instead of silently billing.
- Third-party models (DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, siliconflow-hosted models) are resold on the same API and console as Qwen, so one account covers several vendors.
// cons
- Free quota exists only for cn-beijing (华北2) region models; other regions have no free quota.
- Quota validity is 90 days from Bailian activation, model release or approval (whichever is later), and it cannot be extended, reissued or re-claimed by re-registering under the same verified identity.
- Free quota excludes Batch calls, fine-tuning, model deployment, custom/self-deployed models, PAI-DSW, OSS storage and request fees, and each model (including each dated snapshot) holds a separate non-transferable quota.
- Cache pricing is billed outside the listed input rate (for example explicit cache creation at 125% of the standard input price and cache hits at 10%), so effective cost diverges from the headline number for repeated-context workloads.
Use Model Studio when you need Qwen-family or resold Chinese models behind a single Alibaba Cloud billing account and want to evaluate them on the per-model free quota first. Prototype in cn-beijing on a cheap tier such as qwen-long (0.5 CNY per million input tokens) with the free-quota stop switch enabled, then move the same integration to paid traffic after the 90-day window closes.
written by Mike Fleming, Uprouter editorial · verified against official sources September 16, 2026
Free tier present — value not quantified
This provider offers a free tier, but its terms don’t convert cleanly into a USD figure (e.g. request-count limits or capacity-dependent pools). We refuse to print a misleading zero here. See the note below and the official pricing page for the exact limits.
note: Token allowance, not cash: first activation of Bailian grants a per-model free inference quota of typically 1,000,000 tokens (input and output combined, cn-beijing only, valid 90 days) per help.aliyun.com/zh/model-studio/new-free-quota; no USD-convertible value is published (checked 2026-09-16).
| Plan | Type | Monthly | Input /1M | Output /1M | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier (source-reported) | free | — | — | — | New users get ~1M free inference tokens per model (up to ~50M cumulative across models), valid ~30-90 days (unified to 90 days after 2025-09-08); limited to specific regions (e.g. Singapore/International); after exhaustion, account info must be completed to switch to pay-as-you-go. |
| Qwen3.8-Max | payg | — | $1.60 | $6.40 | — |
Pricing normalized from public sources — always verify with the provider.
$ Does Alibaba Cloud Bailian have a free tier?
Yes — Alibaba Cloud Bailian offers a free tier. Always confirm current limits on Alibaba Cloud Bailian's official pricing page — free tiers change without notice.
$ How much does Alibaba Cloud Bailian cost per 1M tokens?
Alibaba Cloud Bailian does not publish simple per-1M-token pricing (it may bill per request, per output, or via a subscription plan). Check their official pricing page for exact figures.
$ Is Alibaba Cloud Bailian safe to use?
Uprouter rates Alibaba Cloud Bailian as low risk. Low-to-moderate operational risk: prices are published, but the free quota is region-locked to cn-beijing, expires after 90 days and cannot be replenished under the same verified identity, so cost can appear abruptly in month four if the stop switch is not monitored. Account requirements are concrete and stated on the quota page — an Alibaba Cloud account for sign-up, plus real-name verification before any pay-as-you-go usage, with unverified accounts forced into stop-when-exhausted mode. Resold third-party models such as siliconflow/deepseek-v3.2 carry no free quota at all, and international-deployment prices are much higher than cn-beijing, so region choice materially changes the bill. Risk ratings are editorial, evidence-based, and never influenced by affiliate relationships.
Raw community sentiment, shown unblended. Votes never feed into objective data fields like price, risk, or status — and never into sort order.
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// more_informationprice history · live status · risk & confidence · code snippets
price_history
No recorded changes yet.
live_status
current: upNo probes recorded yet.
Uprouter runs its own probes; best-effort, not a guarantee. Probe results depend on our network location and cadence — for production, always use the provider’s own status page.
risk_&_confidence
Low-to-moderate operational risk: prices are published, but the free quota is region-locked to cn-beijing, expires after 90 days and cannot be replenished under the same verified identity, so cost can appear abruptly in month four if the stop switch is not monitored. Account requirements are concrete and stated on the quota page — an Alibaba Cloud account for sign-up, plus real-name verification before any pay-as-you-go usage, with unverified accounts forced into stop-when-exhausted mode. Resold third-party models such as siliconflow/deepseek-v3.2 carry no free quota at all, and international-deployment prices are much higher than cn-beijing, so region choice materially changes the bill.
Confidence reflects how much verifiable evidence (official docs, probe history, community reports) backs this entry. Risk is our editorial assessment of operator reliability and terms — not financial advice.
code_snippets
# Alibaba Cloud Bailian's own API — get a key from their dashboard
curl https://YOUR-PROVIDER-ENDPOINT/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer THEIR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "MODEL_NAME",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Hello" }]
}'Direct to the provider — Uprouter receives nothing; verify their current pricing before purchasing.
Ranked by neutral similarity signals only — live status, free-tier shape and free-credit proximity. Commercial relationships never influence this list.