Alibaba Cloud Bailian
Listed at https://bailian.aliyun.com
💰 Token Pricing
| Type | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Input | Qwen3.5-Max: ¥4/M, Qwen3.5-Plus: ¥2/M, Qwen3.5-72B: ¥4/M, QwQ: ¥2/M | per million tokens |
| Output | Qwen3.5-Max: ¥12/M, Qwen3.5-Plus: ¥6/M, Qwen3.5-72B: ¥12/M, QwQ: ¥8/M | per million tokens |
🤖 Supported Models (9)
✨ Pros
- ✓Qwen3.5 series top-tier capabilities (most popular Chinese open-source family)
- ✓Bailian platform: model serving + RAG + Agent full stack
- ✓Direct China access, stable and reliable
- ✓Qwen-Omni-Turbo multimodal (text+image+audio)
- ✓Tongyi Qianwen best open-source ecosystem (top on HuggingFace)
⚠️ Cons
- ×Qwen3.5-Max pricing higher than DeepSeek/Doubao
- ×Platform complexity (Bailian > model serving > app builder), steep learning curve
- ×Overseas users need international site (separate pricing)
- ×No native Function Calling support in Qwen series
- ×Stream mode occasional disconnection
🎯 Best For
Enterprise AI apps in China; scenarios requiring Qwen-Max top quality output; existing Alibaba Cloud customers
💰 Pricing & Plans
| Model | Input (¥/M tokens) | Output (¥/M tokens) | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.5-Max | ¥4.00 | ¥12.00 | Top-tier reasoning, complex tasks |
| Qwen3.5-Plus | ¥2.00 | ¥6.00 | General chat, balanced price/quality |
| Qwen3.5-72B | ¥4.00 | ¥12.00 | Open-weights equivalent, self-host option |
| QwQ-32B | ¥2.00 | ¥8.00 | Chain-of-thought reasoning (o1-like) |
| Qwen-Omni-Turbo | ¥1.60 | ¥4.80 | Multimodal (text+image+audio) |
🔧 API & Developer Experience
- •API Style: OpenAI-compatible /v1/chat/completions endpoint via Bailian (DashScope) platform — drop-in replacement by changing base_url and api_key.
- •Base URL: https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1 — direct from China, no proxy required. International users use the same endpoint or aliyun.com overseas variant.
- •SDK Compatibility: Works with OpenAI Python/Node SDKs after base_url swap. Alibaba also provides a native DashScope SDK with extended features (RAG, Agent orchestration).
- •Function Calling: Supported on Qwen3.5 series; JSON-schema validated tool calls. Some Qwen models ship without native tool calling — verify model card before integration.
- •Streaming: SSE token streaming by default; QwQ reasoning model streams the chain-of-thought before the final answer (similar to DeepSeek-R1).
- •Context Window: Up to 128K tokens on Qwen3.5-Max/Plus — sufficient for long documents and extended multi-turn dialog. Qwen-Omni-Turbo supports 1M-token context for multimodal long-context workloads.
- •Free Tier: 1M tokens free quota for new users, valid for 90 days — enough to evaluate all Qwen3.5 models before paid commitment.
🏢 Bailian Platform — Beyond the API
Alibaba's Bailian (百炼) platform is more than a model API — it is a full-stack enterprise AI development environment. Beyond the OpenAI-compatible /v1/chat/completions endpoint, Bailian offers first-party RAG (document upload → vector store → retrieval-augmented generation), Agent orchestration (visual workflow builder, multi-step pipelines), and an app builder (low-code deployment of AI apps to web/mobile endpoints). All Qwen models are accessible through the same dashboard, with usage analytics, per-app quotas, and team collaboration features. For China-based teams, the integration with Alibaba Cloud (ECS, OSS, MaxCompute) is a significant operational advantage — same account, same billing, same VPC, same access control. International users get a similar experience through aliyun.com but with separate pricing and quotas. The platform complexity is the main trade-off: Bailian is heavier than a pure API, and teams that only need model inference may find the platform surface larger than necessary. For enterprises already on Alibaba Cloud or building China-market AI products, Bailian is the natural default — the model quality is top-tier, the ecosystem is mature, and the operational integration is unmatched by international providers.
🌐 Regional Availability & Latency
Alibaba Cloud Bailian offers first-party direct access from mainland China, with typical latency from Beijing/Shanghai of 50-150ms for first-token streaming — among the lowest in any provider serving the China market. International access is available through the same endpoint (dashscope.aliyuncs.com) from outside China with slightly higher latency (200-400ms to North America/EU). The platform is ICP-licensed and SOC 2 / ISO 27001 certified, with data residency options (China-only, no cross-border transfer). For production workloads serving Chinese users, Bailian is operationally equivalent to a domestic cloud service — no proxy, no aggregator, no cross-border routing required. International teams that need to serve both China and global markets typically use Bailian for China traffic and OpenAI/Anthropic for non-China traffic, routing at the application layer.