Treat Model Studio free quota as a model-specific account offer with an expiry and scope. Verify the stop setting before using the offer for an unattended prototype.

What is free at Alibaba right now

Free access terms
ConditionVerified details
Current termsEligible newly activated Model Studio accounts can receive model-specific token quotas. Eligibility, model coverage, and expiration are defined by the official quota page.
Expiry90 days

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The new-user offer grants independent model quotas, and a dated snapshot and a current model alias can have separate allocations. Official documentation.

Check the exact identifier used by the application against the console’s offer record. A family name is not enough to establish which allocation is consumed. Keep the active model and its offer evidence together so a later version change does not silently alter the experiment’s assumptions.

Read the current validity condition for the account’s activation state. An old article can describe an earlier offer without applying to a new account. Use the live record and source date, then confirm the account-visible allocation before claiming that the next request is covered.

Limits of the free tier

Published limits have not yet been verified for this selection. Check the official limits documentation and your account console.

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Separate the amount of eligible free work from request throughput. The offer can cover usage while the model’s account-level rate policy still rejects a burst. A throttle is not evidence that free balance is exhausted, and a free-quota stop is not a reason to create more parallel workers.

The offer applies to real-time inference and excludes batch invocation, training, deployment and other listed associated services. Official documentation.

Keep excluded operations out of a free-only promise. A document workflow may use storage, preprocessing or an asynchronous job as well as a model call. Identify each stage and inspect its own billing scope before presenting the whole workflow as covered by the model offer.

What ends the free tier

Unused quota expires under the offer’s validity rules, and continued eligible inference can become paid after exhaustion or expiry unless an applicable stop control prevents it. Official documentation.

Decide the transition before starting the experiment. If the owner wants a free-only prototype, use the supported stop setting and an application-level bound. If a paid continuation is acceptable, save a separate workload estimate and the account controls that govern it. A successful first request should not determine that decision implicitly.

The usage page describes Free Quota Only and the AllocationQuota.FreeTierOnly response when its boundary is reached. Official documentation.

Inspect the current control before toggling it, including any restriction on changing it again. Record the selected model and the intended final state of queued work. A worker should preserve unfinished tasks and expose the condition instead of repeatedly sending requests that cannot pass the configured boundary.

How to build within the free tier

Choose a safe fixture with a clear accepted result. For extraction, include both present and absent facts and require the output to distinguish them. For coding, use a small patch with a meaningful check. This makes limited evaluation traffic answer a real question about the model’s suitability.

Measure the input and output from the actual request rather than treating a configured output maximum as observed usage. Keep failed attempts and additional repair stages in the record. An application that repeatedly asks the model to fix invalid output can consume a quota much faster than a successful demonstration suggests.

Avoid changing the model identifier casually while testing an offer. A snapshot or alias change can alter allocation, behavior and the applicable request settings. Preserve the current fixture and compare the replacement explicitly. Do not assume the service will choose another model with remaining quota for you.

At closeout, save the accepted-task evidence and decide whether a paid evaluation is justified. Stop abandoned schedules and remove unneeded access. Keeping a prototype credential alive without a responsible owner makes future usage harder to explain even when the original experiment stayed within its offer.

Alternatives if you need more

Compare OpenRouter free routes, Gemini free-tier conditions and the free API selection guide using the same task fixture.

Recheck the serving model and policy as well as the offer. A different host can expose a related model while changing account controls and usage conditions. The correct comparison is the application result and operating arrangement, not only the availability of a free entry in a catalog.

For continued Model Studio use, review paid inference categories and the workspace’s spending controls. Keep the stop-or-pay decision explicit in the deployment record.

Use the AI API cost calculator to turn the model and workload you are considering into an estimate.

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Frequently asked questions

Is free quota shared across every model?
The offer documents independent allocations for model identifiers.
Can a snapshot and an alias use different allocations?
Yes. The offer treats them as independent model entries.
Does unused quota last indefinitely?
No. Inspect the applicable validity and expiry conditions.
Does the offer cover batch and deployment work?
The documented scope excludes batch and several associated operations.
Will the service choose a model with unused quota automatically?
Do not assume automatic switching; preserve and manage the selected model explicitly.
How should a free-only worker respond at exhaustion?
Stop or pause predictably and expose the account condition without enabling paid continuation automatically.

Sources

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