Providers

Qwen

OpenClaw now treats Qwen as a first-class bundled provider with canonical id qwen. The bundled provider targets the Qwen Cloud / Alibaba DashScope and Coding Plan endpoints and keeps legacy modelstudio ids working as a compatibility alias.

Provider: qwen
Preferred env var: QWEN_API_KEY
Also accepted for compatibility: MODELSTUDIO_API_KEY, DASHSCOPE_API_KEY
API style: OpenAI-compatible

Getting started

Choose your plan type and follow the setup steps.

Coding Plan (subscription)

Best for: subscription-based access through the Qwen Coding Plan.

Get your API key

Create or copy an API key from home.qwencloud.com/api-keys.

Run onboarding

For the Global endpoint:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-api-key

For the China endpoint:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-api-key-cn

Set a default model

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "qwen/qwen3.5-plus" },
    },
  },
}

Verify the model is available

openclaw models list --provider qwen

Standard (pay-as-you-go)

Best for: pay-as-you-go access through the Standard Model Studio endpoint, including models like qwen3.6-plus that may not be available on the Coding Plan.

Get your API key

Create or copy an API key from home.qwencloud.com/api-keys.

Run onboarding

For the Global endpoint:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-standard-api-key

For the China endpoint:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-standard-api-key-cn

Set a default model

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "qwen/qwen3.5-plus" },
    },
  },
}

Verify the model is available

openclaw models list --provider qwen

Plan types and endpoints

Plan	Region	Auth choice	Endpoint
Standard (pay-as-you-go)	China	`qwen-standard-api-key-cn`	`dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1`
Standard (pay-as-you-go)	Global	`qwen-standard-api-key`	`dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1`
Coding Plan (subscription)	China	`qwen-api-key-cn`	`coding.dashscope.aliyuncs.com/v1`
Coding Plan (subscription)	Global	`qwen-api-key`	`coding-intl.dashscope.aliyuncs.com/v1`

The provider auto-selects the endpoint based on your auth choice. Canonical choices use the qwen-* family; modelstudio-* remains compatibility-only. You can override with a custom baseUrl in config.

Built-in catalog

OpenClaw currently ships this bundled Qwen catalog. The configured catalog is endpoint-aware: Coding Plan configs omit models that are only known to work on the Standard endpoint.

Model ref	Input	Context	Notes
`qwen/qwen3.5-plus`	text, image	1,000,000	Default model
`qwen/qwen3.6-plus`	text, image	1,000,000	Prefer Standard endpoints when you need this model
`qwen/qwen3-max-2026-01-23`	text	262,144	Qwen Max line
`qwen/qwen3-coder-next`	text	262,144	Coding
`qwen/qwen3-coder-plus`	text	1,000,000	Coding
`qwen/MiniMax-M2.5`	text	1,000,000	Reasoning enabled
`qwen/glm-5`	text	202,752	GLM
`qwen/glm-4.7`	text	202,752	GLM
`qwen/kimi-k2.5`	text, image	262,144	Moonshot AI via Alibaba

Thinking Controls

For reasoning-enabled Qwen Cloud models, the bundled provider maps OpenClaw thinking levels to DashScope's top-level enable_thinking request flag. Disabled thinking sends enable_thinking: false; other thinking levels send enable_thinking: true.

Multimodal add-ons

The qwen plugin also exposes multimodal capabilities on the Standard DashScope endpoints (not the Coding Plan endpoints):

Video understanding via qwen-vl-max-latest
Wan video generation via wan2.6-t2v (default), wan2.6-i2v, wan2.6-r2v, wan2.6-r2v-flash, wan2.7-r2v

To use Qwen as the default video provider:

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      videoGenerationModel: { primary: "qwen/wan2.6-t2v" },
    },
  },
}

Advanced configuration

Image and video understanding

The bundled Qwen plugin registers media understanding for images and video on the Standard DashScope endpoints (not the Coding Plan endpoints).

Property	Value
Model	`qwen-vl-max-latest`
Supported input	Images, video

Media understanding is auto-resolved from the configured Qwen auth — no additional config is needed. Ensure you are using a Standard (pay-as-you-go) endpoint for media understanding support.

Qwen 3.6 Plus availability

qwen3.6-plus is available on the Standard (pay-as-you-go) Model Studio endpoints:

China: dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
Global: dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1

If the Coding Plan endpoints return an "unsupported model" error for qwen3.6-plus, switch to Standard (pay-as-you-go) instead of the Coding Plan endpoint/key pair.

OpenClaw's bundled Qwen catalog does not advertise qwen3.6-plus on Coding Plan endpoints, but explicitly configured qwen/qwen3.6-plus entries under models.providers.qwen.models are honored on Coding Plan baseUrls so you can opt that model in if Aliyun enables it on your subscription. The upstream API still decides whether the call succeeds.

Capability plan

The qwen plugin is being positioned as the vendor home for the full Qwen Cloud surface, not just coding/text models.

Text/chat models: bundled now
Tool calling, structured output, thinking: inherited from the OpenAI-compatible transport
Image generation: planned at the provider-plugin layer
Image/video understanding: bundled now on the Standard endpoint
Speech/audio: planned at the provider-plugin layer
Memory embeddings/reranking: planned through the embedding adapter surface
Video generation: bundled now through the shared video-generation capability

Video generation details

For video generation, OpenClaw maps the configured Qwen region to the matching DashScope AIGC host before submitting the job:

Global/Intl: https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com
China: https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com

That means a normal models.providers.qwen.baseUrl pointing at either the Coding Plan or Standard Qwen hosts still keeps video generation on the correct regional DashScope video endpoint.

Current bundled Qwen video-generation limits:

Up to 1 output video per request
Up to 1 input image
Up to 4 input videos
Up to 10 seconds duration
Supports size, aspectRatio, resolution, audio, and watermark
Reference image/video mode currently requires remote http(s) URLs. Local file paths are rejected up front because the DashScope video endpoint does not accept uploaded local buffers for those references.

Streaming usage compatibility

Native Model Studio endpoints advertise streaming usage compatibility on the shared openai-completions transport. OpenClaw keys that off endpoint capabilities now, so DashScope-compatible custom provider ids targeting the same native hosts inherit the same streaming-usage behavior instead of requiring the built-in qwen provider id specifically.

Native-streaming usage compatibility applies to both the Coding Plan hosts and the Standard DashScope-compatible hosts:

https://coding.dashscope.aliyuncs.com/v1
https://coding-intl.dashscope.aliyuncs.com/v1
https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1

Multimodal endpoint regions

Multimodal surfaces (video understanding and Wan video generation) use the Standard DashScope endpoints, not the Coding Plan endpoints:

Global/Intl Standard base URL: https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
China Standard base URL: https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1

Environment and daemon setup

If the Gateway runs as a daemon (launchd/systemd), make sure QWEN_API_KEY is available to that process (for example, in ~/.openclaw/.env or via env.shellEnv).

Model selection

Choosing providers, model refs, and failover behavior.

Video generation

Shared video tool parameters and provider selection.

Alibaba (ModelStudio)

Legacy ModelStudio provider and migration notes.

Troubleshooting

General troubleshooting and FAQ.

# Getting started

Coding Plan (subscription)

Get your API key

Run onboarding

Set a default model

Verify the model is available

Standard (pay-as-you-go)

Get your API key

Run onboarding

Set a default model

Verify the model is available

# Plan types and endpoints

# Built-in catalog

# Thinking Controls

# Multimodal add-ons

# Advanced configuration

# Related

Getting started

Plan types and endpoints

Built-in catalog

Thinking Controls

Multimodal add-ons

Advanced configuration

Related