Can't get on the Qwen Coding Plan? Here's an alternative
Alibaba’s Qwen Coding Plan is a good deal. For $10–50/month you get flat-rate access to Qwen3.5, Kimi K2.5, GLM-5, and MiniMax M2.5 — the models that score within a few points of GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus on most benchmarks, at a fraction of the cost.
The problem is getting in.
What the Qwen Coding Plan offers
Section titled “What the Qwen Coding Plan offers”The plan includes access to a mix of Qwen’s own models and third-party Chinese AI models:
Qwen models: qwen3.5-plus, qwen3-max, qwen3-coder-next, qwen3-coder-plus Third-party: Kimi K2.5 (Moonshot AI), GLM-5 (Zhipu AI), MiniMax M2.5
Usage limits on the Pro plan:
- 90,000 requests/month
- 45,000 per week
- 6,000 per 5-hour window
It’s compatible with Claude Code, OpenClaw, Cursor, Cline, and anything that speaks the OpenAI or Anthropic protocol. At $10/month for the entry tier, the value is hard to beat.
Why people can’t get in
Section titled “Why people can’t get in”The Qwen Coding Plan runs on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio. That comes with friction:
Alibaba Cloud account required. You need a full Alibaba Cloud account with identity verification. Depending on your region, this means uploading ID documents or business registration — a process that can take days and may fail for users outside supported countries.
Regional availability. Alibaba Cloud’s international presence is smaller than AWS, GCP, or Azure. Service availability, payment processing, and support quality vary significantly by region. Users in some countries report account creation issues, payment method rejections, or verification loops.
Capacity constraints. The Lite plan ($10/month) stopped accepting new subscriptions in March 2026. When a provider closes a tier to new users, it’s usually a capacity signal — they’re managing GPU allocation against demand. The Pro plan is available now, but there’s no guarantee it stays open.
One subscription per account. Each Alibaba Cloud account can only hold one Coding Plan subscription. If you need separate keys for different projects or team members, you need separate Alibaba Cloud accounts — each requiring its own identity verification.
These aren’t dealbreakers for everyone. But if you’ve tried to sign up and hit a wall, or if you need access today without a multi-day verification process, there are alternatives.
The same models, available now
Section titled “The same models, available now”Every third-party model on the Qwen Coding Plan is available through other providers — including us. Here’s the overlap:
| Model | Qwen Coding Plan | CheapestInference |
|---|---|---|
| Kimi K2.5 (Moonshot) | Yes | Yes |
| GLM-5 / GLM-5.1 (Zhipu AI) | Yes | Yes |
| MiniMax M2.5 | Yes | Yes |
| Qwen 3.5 (397B, 122B, 35B) | qwen3.5-plus | Yes (all sizes) |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | No | Yes |
| DeepSeek R1 | No | Yes |
Qwen’s plan doesn’t include DeepSeek models — a notable gap given that DeepSeek V3.2 is one of the strongest open-source coding models available. It also doesn’t include proprietary models from OpenAI or Anthropic.
How the limits compare
Section titled “How the limits compare”The Qwen Coding Plan caps usage at 6,000 requests per 5-hour window. For an agent framework like OpenClaw or Claude Code that makes 30–50 requests per task, that’s roughly 120–200 tasks per window. Enough for most individual developers, but potentially tight for heavy agent users or small teams sharing an account.
CheapestInference uses per-key budget caps that reset every 8 hours instead of hard request counts. The practical difference: your agent doesn’t hit a sudden cliff at request 6,001 — it hits a budget limit that you control per key, and different keys can have different budgets.
If you’re already using the Qwen Coding Plan with Claude Code, OpenClaw, or Cursor, switching to CheapestInference is a config change — same OpenAI-compatible API format:
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI( base_url="https://api.cheapestinference.com/v1", api_key="sk-your-key")
response = client.chat.completions.create( model="Qwen/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B", messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Refactor this function..."}])For OpenClaw, update your config:
{ env: { CHEAPESTINFERENCE_API_KEY: "sk-..." }, models: { providers: { cheapestinference: { baseUrl: "https://api.cheapestinference.com/v1", apiKey: "${CHEAPESTINFERENCE_API_KEY}", api: "openai-completions", models: [{ id: "Qwen/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B", name: "Qwen 3.5 397B" }], }, }, }, agents: { defaults: { model: { primary: "cheapestinference/Qwen/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B" }, }, },}When to use each
Section titled “When to use each”Use the Qwen Coding Plan if: You can get an Alibaba Cloud account verified in your region, the plan is accepting new subscribers, and you only need the models they offer. At $10/month for 90K requests, the per-request math is excellent.
Use CheapestInference if: You can’t get on the Qwen plan, you need models they don’t carry (DeepSeek, Claude, GPT), you want per-key budget isolation for multiple agents, or you need to be up and running in minutes without an identity verification process.
Both are valid options. The best one depends on whether you can actually get access — and what you need access to.
CheapestInference serves Qwen, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, DeepSeek, and more through one OpenAI-compatible API. No waitlist, no verification — sign up and start in minutes. Get started or compare plans.