Qwen Code Free

Qwen Code is a free, open-source terminal coding agent from Alibaba that pairs a Gemini CLI-style interface with the Qwen3-Coder model and 2,000 daily free requests.

What is Qwen Code?

Qwen Code is Alibaba’s open-source fork of Gemini CLI, retargeted to the Qwen3-Coder model. It edits files and runs commands from your terminal, and the Qwen OAuth login gives 2,000 free requests a day.

You can find it at Qwen Code.

Qwen Code Product Features

• Qwen3-Coder backbone — a 480B-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 35B active parameters, tuned for agentic coding.
• 2,000 free requests/day — the largest free quota of any major CLI agent, obtained through a browser OAuth login.
• OpenAI-compatible config — point it at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including local vLLM or Ollama servers.
• Multi-file editing — the agent patches several files in one turn and shows a unified diff.
• MCP client support — same protocol as Claude Code and Gemini CLI.
• 256K native context — extended to 1M tokens on the API for long-context work.

Product Highlights

• Completely free with the Qwen OAuth tier; no credit card.
• Runs on macOS, Linux and Windows via npm.
• Popular in China and among developers who want to avoid US-hosted inference.

Qwen Code Use Cases

• Day-to-day coding on a laptop with no AI budget.
• Self-hosted setups where the model runs on your own GPU box.
• Teaching a junior developer how agentic coding loops work.
• Small scripting jobs — log parsing, CSV munging, file renames.
• Prototyping an MCP-based internal tool without paying per token.

Who should use Qwen Code?

Good fit: Free quota is huge, the code is auditable, and you can swap in any model endpoint. A realistic option for developers in regions where US AI subscriptions are awkward to pay for.

Where it falls short: Hosted inference runs through Alibaba, so check your data policy before pasting proprietary code. The documentation is thinner than Google’s or Anthropic’s.

Bottom line: The best zero-cost CLI agent if you accept Alibaba-hosted inference. Use Gemini CLI instead if the daily cap of 1,000 is enough and you prefer a US provider.

Quick Summary

• Qwen Code is a 2025 open-source CLI agent from Alibaba’s Qwen team.
• It is free: 2,000 requests per day through Qwen OAuth.
• It inherits Gemini CLI’s UX, so anyone who knows that tool is instantly productive.
• Weaker than Claude Code on large, ambiguous refactors.
• Data goes to Alibaba Cloud by default, which rules it out for many enterprises.