When you first activate Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, the platform automatically grants you an exclusive free quota for various models.
Only models in the China (Beijing) region and service deployment scope of Chinese mainland) have a free quota. No free quota is available for other regions or deployment scopes.
Guidelines
Validity period
The free quota is valid for 30 to 90 days, starting from the date you activate Alibaba Cloud Model Studio or your model application is approved. After the quota expires or is depleted, you will be charged for subsequent model inference service invocations.
Starting from 11:00 on September 8, 2025, users who activate Alibaba Cloud Model Studio for the first time will receive a free quota that is valid for 90 days. Users who activated the service before this date are not affected. For more information, see the Notice on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Free Quota Validity Period Adjustment.
Scope
The free quota only covers charges for real-time inference (invocations). It cannot be applied to the following scenarios:
Custom models (fine-tuned or deployed models)
Notes
An Alibaba Cloud account and its RAM users share the same free quota.
For example, if the total free quota for qwen-max is 1,000,000 tokens, and the Alibaba Cloud account uses 100,000 tokens while a RAM user uses 200,000 tokens, the remaining free quota for qwen-max is 700,000 tokens.
Get your free quota
Visit Alibaba Cloud Model Studio - China (Mainland). After you read and agree to the service agreement, the system automatically activates Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and issues your free quota
If the service agreement does not appear, you have already activated Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and received a free quota.
Check your remaining quota
There are two ways to check the remaining free quota for your models.
Method 1: From the model usage page
In the console, go to the model usage page and click the Free Quota tab to view the remaining quota and expiration date for all your models.
Method 2: From the model list page
On the Model Square page, find the target model series and click the series to open the details page.
Select a model version under Model Code, and view the remaining quota in the Free Quota section. If no free quota is displayed, the quota may have expired. For the specific validity period, see the model list.
362,917/1,000,000 indicates that 362,917 tokens remain out of a total of 1,000,000 tokens.
The free quota displayed in the console is updated every minute. You must manually refresh the page to view the latest data.
Use your free quota
Real-time invocations of large models automatically use your free quota. For more information, see Get started with Alibaba Cloud Model Studio.
By default, new unverified users cannot continue using the service after their free quota is depleted. You must complete identity verification and top up your account before you can use the pay-as-you-go billing method. For verified users, you are automatically charged for invocations after the free quota is depleted. To prevent unexpected charges, you can enable the stop upon free quota exhaustion feature in advance.
New unverified users will receive the error code AllocationQuota.FreeTierOnly when the free quota is depleted. You must complete identity verification and top up your account before you can continue.
Stop upon free quota exhaustion
When this feature is enabled, the service stops responding and returns the error code AllocationQuota.FreeTierOnly once your free quota is depleted. You will not be charged for further usage.
How to enable
Method 1: From the model usage page
To enable for a single model:
In the console, go to the model usage page and click the Free Quota tab.
Find the target model in the list and turn on the Free Quota Only switch in the Actions column. This feature cannot be enabled for models that do not have a free quota.
To enable in batches:
In the console, go to the model usage page and click the Free Quota tab.
Click Free Quota Only Batch Operation and select Batch Enable from the drop-down menu.
Select the target models and click Batch Enable. To enable the feature for all eligible and unconfigured models, click Enable for All Models.
In the confirmation dialog box, click Enable Free Quota Only.
Method 2: From the Model Square page
Take Qwen3-Coder-Plus as an example. Go to the Qwen3-Coder-Plus model details page and turn on the Free Quota Only switch.
If the switch is not displayed for a model, it means the free quota for that model has been depleted or has expired, or the model does not offer a free quota.
How to disable
This feature is disabled by default. If you have enabled Free Quota Only, you can disable it only after the console shows that the free quota is used up.
The free quota data in the console is updated every minute. You may need to refresh the page to see the latest information.
FAQ
Quota depletion notifications
When the remaining amount drops to 20% or is completely used up, the system sends notifications via SMS, internal messages, and email.
To enable or disable alerts or modify the alert threshold, go to My Free Trials. Find the trial with the description Model Studio Large Model Inference Free Trial, click View Trial Details, and then click Configure Alert Rule for Remaining Quota in the upper-right corner.
Effects of quota depletion
For new unverified users: You cannot continue making invocations after the free quota is depleted. You must complete identity verification and top up your account before you can switch to pay-as-you-go billing.
For verified users:
If you have enabled the stop upon free quota exhaustion feature, you cannot continue making invocations after the free quota is depleted. You must disable the stop upon free quota exhaustion feature before you can switch to pay-as-you-go billing.
If you have not enabled the stop upon free quota exhaustion feature, ongoing invocations are not interrupted. Any tokens used beyond the free quota are charged at the input/output prices listed in the console. These charges are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis and deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account, which may lead to an overdue balance.
If your account has an overdue balance, you cannot make model invocations, even if other models still have a free quota.
Before making an invocation, we recommend that you check the remaining quota for the model and configure Budget Management or account balance alerts to ensure that your account has a sufficient balance. Unused balances are eligible for balance withdrawal.
How to recharge after your free quota runs out?
Alibaba Cloud supports various top-up methods, such as Alipay, UnionPay Online Payment, and online banking. The methods available for your account are displayed on the top-up page. For more information, see Top-up methods.
After you complete a top-up, it may take a few minutes for your account balance to update. Please check your available balance later in Billing Management. You can make model invocations as normal once your balance is updated and you have no overdue payments.
View usage records and bills
Usage records are generated a few minutes after an invocation is complete. Follow these steps:
On the Billing Details page, select the billing month, for Product Name, select Model Studio, and click Search.
Click the
icon in the upper-right corner of the bill list, find Usage Information, select the Deducted Usage checkbox, and click Confirm.Find the bill item where the Cost Type is Free Quota. The value in the Deducted Usage column is the amount of usage covered by your free quota.
Why was I charged?
Common reasons include:
The model you used no longer has a free quota.
The free quota cannot be used to cover charges from OpenAI-compatible Batch (File Input) invocations.
The free quota data in the console is updated every minute and requires a manual page refresh. If you do not refresh the page, it may show a remaining free quota when it has actually been depleted, leading to charges for new invocations. Always refresh the page before use to get the latest information.
You can check your billing details by following the steps in How do I identify which model incurred charges? and How do I view model invocation records?
Identify models with charges
A few minutes after an invocation is complete, on the Billing Details page, select the billing month, for Product Name, select Model Inference in Model Studio, and then click Search. You can view the models that incurred charges in the Asset/Resource Instance ID column.
View model invocation records
One hour after you call a model, go to the Monitoring page. Set the query conditions, such as the time range and workspace. Then, in the Models area, find the target model and click Monitor in the Actions column to view the model's call statistics. For more information, see the Monitoring document.
Data is updated hourly. During peak periods, there may be an hour-level latency.
How can I avoid being charged?
After your free quota is depleted, charges are automatically deducted from your account balance. You can reduce the risk of being charged by taking the following actions:
To delete a created API key: Go to the API key (China (Beijing)) or API key (Singapore) page of Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and delete the API key. After an API key is deleted, you can no longer use it to call models, and you will no longer incur invocation fees.
Set High-spending Alert: When a product's daily bill exceeds the alert threshold, you will receive one SMS reminder per day (based on statistics as of 24:00 on the previous day).
From the Alert Product drop-down list, select a specific product, such as Model Studio Model Deployment, Model Studio Model Inference, or Model Studio Model Training. In the Alert Threshold field, enter an amount, for example,
0.01, and then click Add to create the alert rule.
Invocation failures with remaining quota
Check if your Alibaba Cloud account has an overdue payment. If your account has an overdue payment, you cannot make invocations even if the model still has a free quota.
Missing free quota information
If the Free Quota column displays No free quota, or if the Free Quota section is not visible, it means the free quota for the corresponding model under your account has expired.
The China (Beijing) region does not offer a free quota.