Qwen4-Max preview opens on Alibaba's Token Plan until Nov 25

Alibaba opened a preview of Qwen4-Max, the flagship of its next-generation Qwen family, on November 11, 2026. The model ID is qwen4-max-preview. Alibaba's Model Studio documentation says it is available through the Token Plan subscription only, with no pay-as-you-go access, and that it will be retired when the preview ends on November 25.

What changed

• Model ID: qwen4-max-preview. The preview runs from 10:00 on November 11 to 24:00 on November 25, 2026 (UTC+8). Alibaba says the model will not change during that window.
• Access: Token Plan (Personal or Team) only. Pay-as-you-go is not supported, so there is no per-token price yet.
• Context window of 1M tokens. Max output is 393,216 tokens, shared by thinking and the final answer.
• Inputs: text, images and video. Output: text. Thinking is on by default, with reasoning_effort set to low, medium or xhigh (the default).
• Function calling, web search, built-in tools and JSON Schema outputs. Compatible with the OpenAI Chat Completions and Responses APIs and the Anthropic Messages API.

Before you plug it in

• Token Plan Personal Edition is for interactive use inside coding and agent tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, Qwen Code, Qoder and OpenClaw. Alibaba says it must not be used for automation scripts, custom application backends or non-interactive batch calls.
• Token Plan runs only in the Singapore region in Global deployment mode, so prompts and outputs involve cross-border data transfer.
• Starting with qwen4-max-preview, max_tokens equals max_completion_tokens in Chat Completions and covers thinking plus the answer. A limit sized for the answer alone may cut output short.

What to do

Use the preview to evaluate Qwen4-Max inside a supported coding tool. Alibaba's terms rule out the Token Plan key for application backends, so keep a pay-as-you-go model in production for now.

Qwen on RouterPlus

Qwen4-Max is not in the RouterPlus catalog as of November 11, 2026. Current Qwen flagships in the catalog, per million tokens on November 11, 2026:

See Qwen3.8 Max, Qwen3.7 Max, Qwen3.8 Flash and all Qwen models on RouterPlus.

Sources

1. Alibaba Cloud Model Studio: Qwen4-Max-Preview (November 11, 2026)
2. Alibaba Cloud Model Studio: Token Plan (Personal Edition)
3. RouterPlus model catalog (November 11, 2026)