Yi Model vs Qwen
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Yi Model
01.AI's open bilingual models, frozen since 2024; the paid API closed...
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Qwen
Alibaba Cloud's LLM family, open weights through to the Qwen3.8-Max fl...
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| RECATOOLS Score | 6.8 / 10 | 8.6 / 10 |
| Capability | ||
| Value for money | ||
| Ease of use | ||
| ASEAN readiness | ||
| API quality | ||
| Pricing | Open Source | Freemium |
| Free tier | Yi-6B, Yi-34B, Yi-1.5 and Yi-Coder weights free under Apache 2.0; the paid Yi API closed on 3 September 2026 | Open weights to self-host; free Qwen Chat; 1M free tokens per model for 90 days in Model Studio's Singapore region |
| Paid from | — | From $0.03 per million input tokens (qwen3.7-flash, prompts up to 32K, Singapore region) |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | 500k+ downloads | Consumer app ~203M MAU (April 2026), #3 globally |
| Founded | 2023 | 2023 |
| Maker | 01.AI (零一万物) | Alibaba Cloud |
| Verdict | Yi is now a finished product line. The open weights, from Yi-6B to Yi-1.5 and Yi-Coder, remain free under Apache 2.0 and are still a usable bilingual Chinese-English base, especially for teams that already deployed them.... |
Qwen is the most practical open-weight family to build on in 2026: Apache 2.0 models from under a billion to hundreds of billions of parameters, and now even the Max-tier flagship available to download. Hosted pricing in... |
| Full review → | Full review → |
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Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.