> ModelScope
ModelScope (魔搭, modelscope.cn) is an open-source model and dataset community founded in June 2022 by the Institute for Intelligent Computing together with the CCF Open Source Development Committee, organised around 'Model-as-a-Service'. The platform publishes models, datasets, Studios (application display space), MCP and Skills listings, and maintains the ModelScope, Swift, EvalScope and ModelScope-Agent frameworks. Its stated free offering is platform credits: 'Sign up / Log in to get 200 Magicubes' plus 'Link Alibaba Cloud account, get 50 more daily', with Studios described as 'a free and flexible AI application display space'.
// pros
- Free platform credits are stated on the home page: 200 Magicubes on sign-up or login, plus 50 more per day when an Alibaba Cloud account is linked.
- Studios are officially described as a free and flexible space to build and demonstrate AI applications on top of platform models.
- Four maintained open-source frameworks (ModelScope, Swift, EvalScope, ModelScope-Agent) let teams run inference and training locally instead of paying for hosted calls.
- Task coverage is broad and documented on-site: computer vision, NLP, speech recognition/synthesis, multimodal generation and scientific computing, with models, datasets and MCP servers catalogued together.
- The operator is a named Chinese entity with published filing (沪ICP备2024081488号-1) and a public cooperation contact.
// cons
- The Magicube allowance carries no published CNY or USD value, so it cannot be converted into a dollar credit amount.
- All model-service documentation under docs/model-service/API-Inference/ is JavaScript-rendered and returned no readable text, so per-model inference quota, rate limits and any paid pricing could not be verified from official pages.
- The account and billing path is China-first, with Alibaba Cloud linkage presented as the normal way to extend the free allowance.
- The free allowance is partly gamified (daily gifts for community interactions), making it conditional rather than a fixed balance.
Treat ModelScope as the open-weights catalogue and demo layer rather than a metered API vendor: pull the models into your own runtime with Swift or ModelScope, and use the free Magicubes plus linked Alibaba Cloud account only for evaluation. Where you need contractual throughput or a documented rate limit, budget for hosted inference elsewhere and keep ModelScope for prototyping.
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: No cash value stated: the official home page says 'Sign up / Log in to get 200 Magicubes' and 'Link Alibaba Cloud account, get 50 more daily' (modelscope.cn, checked 2026-09-16); Magicubes have no published CNY or USD rate.
| Plan | Type | Monthly | Input /1M | Output /1M | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier (source-reported) | free | — | — | — | 2000 API-Inference calls/day per user, resetting at UTC+8 00:00, non-cumulative, returning 429 when exceeded; individual models have their own caps (e.g. Qwen3-Coder 500, DeepSeek-R1/V3.1 limited to ~200/day); base_url https://api-inference.modelscope.cn/v1; requires binding an Alibaba Cloud account. |
| Free tier | free | — | Free | Free | daily request caps |
| Free Tier | free | — | — | — | 2,000 calls per day aggregate; max 200 per model. |
Pricing normalized from public sources — always verify with the provider.
// model prices
| Model | Input /1M | Output /1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen family (most stable) | — | — | — |
| DeepSeek-V3.1 | — | — | — |
| Kimi | — | — | — |
| GLM family (per the current console availability) | — | — | — |
| DeepSeek-R1 | — | — | 64k |
$ Does ModelScope have a free tier?
Yes — ModelScope offers a free tier. Always confirm current limits on ModelScope's official pricing page — free tiers change without notice.
$ How much does ModelScope cost per 1M tokens?
ModelScope 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 ModelScope safe to use?
Uprouter rates ModelScope as low risk. Moderate risk for anything production-facing: the only free allowance stated officially is Magicubes, whose monetary value and expiry are not published, and the API-Inference documentation is not retrievable as text, so effective limits cannot be confirmed before building. Sign-up requires a ModelScope account and the additional daily allowance requires linking an Alibaba Cloud account, concentrating identity and billing in one vendor ecosystem. Free Studio hosting is explicitly application demonstration space, not a service-level commitment, so it should not be the basis of a production dependency. 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.
No published reviews yet — be the first.
// more_informationprice history · live status · risk & confidence · code snippets
price_history
No recorded changes yet.
live_status
full history →best-effort probes · not a guarantee · last 15h ago
| Checked | Status | Latency |
|---|---|---|
| 15h ago | up | 1550ms |
| 1d ago | up | 1825ms |
| 3d ago | up | 1710ms |
| 4d ago | up | 1769ms |
| 6d ago | up | 1804ms |
| 7d ago | up | 1661ms |
| 9d ago | up | 1659ms |
| 11d ago | up | 1594ms |
| 12d ago | up | 1948ms |
| 13d ago | up | 1829ms |
| 14d ago | up | 1759ms |
| 15d ago | up | 1919ms |
| 15d ago | up | 1741ms |
| 16d ago | up | 1757ms |
| 17d ago | up | 1813ms |
| 18d ago | up | 1747ms |
| 19d ago | up | 2013ms |
| 19d ago | up | 1977ms |
| 20d ago | up | 1656ms |
| 21d ago | up | 1979ms |
| 22d ago | up | 1707ms |
| 22d ago | up | 1795ms |
| 23d ago | up | 1654ms |
| 24d ago | up | 1647ms |
| 25d ago | up | 1961ms |
| 26d ago | up | 1609ms |
| 27d ago | up | 1978ms |
| 27d ago | up | 1985ms |
| 28d ago | up | 2233ms |
| 29d ago | up | 1926ms |
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
Moderate risk for anything production-facing: the only free allowance stated officially is Magicubes, whose monetary value and expiry are not published, and the API-Inference documentation is not retrievable as text, so effective limits cannot be confirmed before building. Sign-up requires a ModelScope account and the additional daily allowance requires linking an Alibaba Cloud account, concentrating identity and billing in one vendor ecosystem. Free Studio hosting is explicitly application demonstration space, not a service-level commitment, so it should not be the basis of a production dependency.
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
# ModelScope'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": "qwen-family-most-stable",
"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.