Alibaba's Qwen4-Max hit 900,000 views in 13 hours. It ships with no benchmarks and shuts off Nov. 25
Alibaba's next flagship model is live for two weeks, for subscribers only, with a 1 million-token window but no published scores or per-token price.
Alibaba's next flagship AI model is live, but only for two weeks, only for subscribers, and without a single benchmark score. Qwen4-Max-Preview opened at 10:00 on November 11 Beijing time (9 PM ET on November 10) and will be retired at 24:00 on November 25 (11 AM ET), according to Alibaba Cloud's documentation. Alibaba says it will make no changes during that window.
The launch post from the Qwen team on X passed 900,000 views in about 13 hours. Developers get a 1 million-token context window, image and video input, and a model Alibaba says has "stronger coding and agentic capabilities." What they do not get is a published per-token price, a pay-as-you-go option, or any test results to judge those claims against.
What Alibaba actually shipped#
The model ID is qwen4-max-preview. It is available through Alibaba's Token Plan subscription only, and the docs say plainly that pay-as-you-go access is not supported. Alibaba's Qwen team also offered early access in its Qwen app and in its QwenWork, Qoder and QwenStudio tools, TechNode reported.
| Spec | Qwen4-Max-Preview |
|---|---|
| Context window | 1 million tokens |
| Maximum output | 393,216 tokens (thinking plus answer) |
| Inputs | Text, images, video |
| Thinking | On by default, effort set to "xhigh" |
| APIs | OpenAI Chat Completions, Responses, Anthropic Messages |
| Access | Token Plan only, no pay-as-you-go |
Source: Alibaba Cloud Model Studio documentation, retrieved November 11, 2026.
The model works with the OpenAI and Anthropic API formats, so developers can point existing tools at it by changing the base URL and model name. The international endpoint runs from Alibaba's Singapore region, ap-southeast-1.
The missing scorecard#
Alibaba has not published benchmark scores for the preview. Neither the documentation nor the launch post includes any. A blog post from OrcaRouter, an AI routing company that sells access to other Qwen models, said on Wednesday that no vendor or independent scores existed as of November 11. It also noted that Alibaba named the Qwen 4 tiers at its Apsara conference on September 22 without giving specs for any of them.
That matters because "stronger coding" is the claim every lab makes. Without scores, developers have to test the model themselves, and they have 14 days to do it before it disappears. The docs say the model will be retired when the preview ends. They do not say what replaces it or when.
- Alibaba names Qwen 4 tiers at its Apsara conference, with no specs
- Reddit users complain Qwen 4 is arriving in slow motion
- Preview opens at 9 PM ET (10 AM Nov. 11 Beijing time)
- Launch post passes 900,000 views on X
- Preview retired at 11 AM ET (midnight Beijing time)
Source: Alibaba Cloud, OrcaRouter blog, Qwen on X
The fine print developers should read#
One change can quietly break existing code. Starting with this model, Alibaba says max_tokens in the Chat Completions format now caps thinking and the final answer together. Older Qwen models applied the cap to the answer alone. Because thinking is on by default at the highest effort level, a limit sized for a short answer may cut off the response before the model finishes reasoning. The docs warn about this directly and tell developers to leave room for both.
Thinking is also on by default in multi-turn chats. Alibaba asks developers to send past reasoning back in a separate reasoning_content field, not mixed into the main reply text.
The discount Alibaba is pushing#
Alibaba Cloud is trying to get as many developers as possible to try the model in that short window. Its main account posted that Token Plan Credits are 80% off for a limited time, and 88% off at night, from 22:00 to 08:00 Beijing time. That night window is 9 AM to 7 PM ET, which lines up with the US workday.
The discount is a deal on subscription credits, not a per-token rate. Alibaba has still not said what the model costs per million tokens, which makes it hard to compare with OpenAI, Anthropic or Google. Google's pricing fight over its own new models is covered in our Gemini 4 price war story.
How X and Reddit reacted#
The Qwen team's launch post carried the headline "Qwen4 is coming" and asked developers to "put it to the test on a real problem." By about 10 AM ET on Wednesday it had about 919,000 views, 10,585 likes, 1,360 reposts and 953 quote posts, according to X's public metrics.
Source: X public metrics for Qwen's post
Show the numbers
| Type | Count |
|---|---|
| Likes | 10,585 |
| Reposts | 1,360 |
| Bookmarks | 1,323 |
| Quote posts | 953 |
| Replies | 785 |
On Reddit's r/LocalLLaMA, where users run open models on their own hardware, a thread titled "Qwen4 is coming, preview now live on Alibaba Token Plan" tracked the launch. Two days earlier, another user posted "Anyone else feeling like Qwen4's release happens in slow-motion?", a sign of how long the wait since September has felt to that community. Many of its members care most about open weights they can download and keep. A closed, subscription-only, two-week preview gives them none of that. These threads reflect user discussion, not a measure of wider opinion.
What decides whether this matters#
The preview's end date is the only firm date Alibaba has given. If it publishes benchmark scores, a per-token price or a general release before November 25, the preview becomes a real product launch. If it does not, developers will have spent two weeks testing a model they cannot keep building on. For the wider race among AI labs and how investors are judging it, see our report on Anthropic's IPO.
Cite this article
Patrick Karsh. “Alibaba's Qwen4-Max hit 900,000 views in 13 hours. It ships with no benchmarks and shuts off Nov. 25.” 567 Business. Published 2026-11-11. https://567business.com/news/alibaba-qwen4-max-preview-no-benchmarks-14-days
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