Alibaba's model family and the world's most-downloaded open-weight AI — Apache-2.0 and multilingual
Free
Average score: 7.4/10 across 8 dimensions. How we score →
Qwen (Tongyi Qianwen) is Alibaba's AI family and the de facto standard for open-weight models: most of the lineup, from 0.6B up to a 235B mixture-of-experts, ships under the permissive Apache 2.0 license and tops the Hugging Face download charts. Built multilingual-first (100+ languages), it's strong on coding and reasoning. Self-hosting the open models is free; the hosted Alibaba Cloud API is cheap, and only the closed Qwen-Max flagship is API-only. As a Chinese cloud service it carries the usual data-jurisdiction caveats, but self-hosting removes them.
Top-rated Writing tools also reviewed by Pickurai.
The most versatile AI assistant — great for any task, free to start
Best at: PopularityAnthropic's AI — outstanding at analysis, long documents, and careful reasoning
Best at: PopularityAI writing assistant for clear, mistake-free writing in real time
Best at: PopularityChatGPT at full power — faster, smarter, with image and web access
Best at: PowerYes, Qwen (Alibaba) is completely free. There are no paid plans — you get full access without a credit card or account upgrade. It scores 9/10 for free-tier quality on Pickurai (Generous, most users get real value).
Qwen (Alibaba) is excellent value — Pickurai rates it 10/10 for value for money (Outstanding ROI — free or near-free). Combined with a power score of 9/10 and ease of use at 6/10, it delivers strong results that justify its price for most users.
Qwen (Alibaba) scores 7.4/10 on average across all 8 Pickurai dimensions. The most popular alternatives in the Writing category are ChatGPT (7.4/10 avg, Free + from $8/mo) and Claude (7.9/10 avg, Free + from $20/mo). Qwen (Alibaba) stands out particularly for its Value for Money score of 10/10. See the alternatives section below for a full side-by-side comparison.
