The consensus in short: users rate Qwen highly because it gives away a flagship model, Qwen3.8-Max, plus Deep Research, image and video tools, all with no subscription. Students and researchers are the happiest reviewers. The negative reviews are specific, not general: Max is slow and over-thinks, video generation stalls, Arabic–English mixed text can come out scrambled, some users report new time-based usage caps and models being removed, and politically sensitive topics about China are filtered. Testers agree it is close to the top tier but not at it, and that its main advantage is cost. Our score of 4.3/5 lines up closely with the 4.1–4.4 average on the app stores.
Qwen ratings across the app stores
Alibaba publishes two official Qwen apps internationally, which confuses many readers, and it shows in the reviews. Qwen Studio (formerly Qwen Chat, published by Alibaba Cloud) is the ChatGPT-style app that also runs at chat.qwen.ai. Qwen – Alibaba AI Assistant (published by the Alibaba Qwen Team) is the international version of the consumer app Alibaba relaunched in November 2025. It is pitched at everyday jobs such as photo editing, video, translation and scanning documents. Both run the same model family.
| Where | Rating | Sample size | How much to trust it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Play – Qwen (Alibaba AI Assistant) | 4.4 / 5 | ~167K | High. A large, verified sample, though it skews towards users in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East |
| Google Play – Qwen Studio | 4.1–4.2 / 5 | ~16.5K | High. A smaller but more technical audience, so the complaints are more detailed |
| App Store – Qwen | ~4.7 / 5 (tracker estimate) | ~40K combined | Medium. Third-party aggregate from May 2026; the iOS app is not listed in the US or most of western Europe |
| Product Hunt – Qwen Chat | 5.0 / 5 | 1 review | Low. Too few reviews to mean anything |
| G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, PeerSpot | No meaningful score | 0 to a handful | None. Qwen has almost no presence on business-software review sites, so ignore any "Qwen 4.9 on Trustpilot" claims |
Two patterns stand out. First, the assistant app outscores Qwen Studio by about a third of a star. Its users mostly ask everyday questions, while Qwen Studio's users push the model on coding, long documents and creative writing, where the gaps show. Second, the ratings are regionally lopsided. Qwen Studio's best chart ranking has been in Russia's productivity category, and the app's audience overlaps heavily with DeepSeek, Kimi and Grok users. In the US and EU, where the iOS app isn't listed, there are far fewer reviews and they are cooler.
What users love about Qwen
"It's free, and it's the good model"
The most common theme by far. Reviewers keep pointing out that the flagship model, Deep Research and image tools cost nothing, and several call out third-party apps for charging for the same thing.
Study and document work
Students and researchers praise detailed answers and its handling of long, complex documents. Five-star Qwen Studio reviews in September 2026 single out study, research and document analysis.
Persistence on hard tasks
Testers describe Qwen3.8-Max as stubborn in a useful way. Vals AI saw it climb from 22nd to 4th on its Legal Research Bench at roughly $2.49 per task, and attributed the jump to persistence rather than raw intelligence.
Multilingual and Chinese text
Users writing in Chinese, Japanese and south-east Asian languages rate it above Western assistants. Qwen-Image's in-image text rendering also gets regular praise.
Image analysis
Even on-the-fence reviewers credit Qwen3.8-Max with turning an image into a detailed, reusable prompt, and with strong visual question answering.
Open weights for the cautious
Developers who don't trust the app with their data like that they can run Qwen locally instead. Qwen3.8-27B is Apache 2.0, and since August a Max-class checkpoint is downloadable too (details below).
The complaints that keep coming up
We grouped the recurring one-to-three-star reviews and forum threads by theme. The bars show roughly how often each theme appears in the critical reviews we read. They are our estimate, not a formal count.
Speed and over-thinking. On r/Qwen_AI, coding feedback is split. Some users put Qwen3.8-Max alongside Claude and GPT, while others find it slow, costly through the API and prone to overthinking. One hands-on review summed up its runs as useful output, slow responses and one run that returned nothing.
Video generation stalls. A highly upvoted Play review says you can only make one video per uploaded image: a second prompt in the same chat hangs at "generating" indefinitely. The reviewer also asks for a stop button to cancel a request after sending.
Usage caps and disappearing models. A September Qwen Studio review says the app now imposes a time-based limit before you can chat again, and that the reviewer's favourite fast model (Qwen3.6-27B) had been removed. Alibaba still publishes no official free-tier limits.
Mixed-language text gets scrambled. Arabic speakers report that sentences mixing Arabic and English come out with the words jumbled and the order broken, which makes the output unreadable. The developer has replied that a fix is in progress.
Creative-writing cut-offs. Fiction writers say mature content is hit-and-miss: a reply may stop halfway and flag itself as inappropriate, forcing a fresh chat, and characters sometimes get mixed up across long stories.
Ads promise more than the app does. One reviewer installed the app after ads showing video generation and advanced voice, then couldn't find them. Alibaba replied that both features are supported. Part of the confusion comes from having two official apps with different feature sets.
Image editing is uneven. A tester who was otherwise positive found Qwen-Image 3 weak at editing selfies (img2img), even though image analysis was strong.
Political filtering shows up less in app-store reviews than in press coverage, but it is real. An NDSS 2026 study by researchers at Michigan and Berkeley found the earlier Qwen2.5-Max app blocked a meaningful share of China-sensitive queries, usually before the model answered. Reviewers still report the behaviour in the current app. Everyday, technical and creative use is unaffected.
What hands-on testers found
Independent testing of Qwen3.8-Max is thinner than for GPT or Claude, and the results that exist were run on different harnesses and versions. Here is what has been published and what it adds up to.
| Tester | What they ran | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Thomas Wiegold (hands-on review) | Four real-world builds, including a website and a 1,000-hand simulation, on the $18/mo Token Plan | Good results across the board, a little less detailed than Grok 4.5 on statistics. The four tests together used just 6% of a week's credits |
| Trilogy AI | Architecture review of a 269-file codebase in OpenCode | Qwen3.8-Max Preview scored 80 vs Kimi K3's 83; Qwen was stronger on system boundaries and citing evidence |
| Vals AI | Legal Research Bench | Rose from #22 to #4 at about $2.49 per task, credited to persistence |
| Independent speed tests | Throughput and verbosity on standard index suites | Roughly 40–45 tokens/s, with far more reasoning tokens than the median model, which explains the "slow" reviews |
| Alibaba (official) | Launch benchmarks, July–Aug 2026 | Claimed it was second only to Claude Fable 5 at preview, but published no benchmark table at the time. Treat vendor numbers as marketing |
Our read: testers agree that Qwen3.8-Max sits just below the frontier, around Kimi K3 and the GPT-6 mid-tier rather than Fable 5 or GPT-6 Sol. It is strongest on long documents, multi-step coding and research, where its persistence pays off, and weakest wherever you need a quick answer. On r/LocalLLaMA, some users have questioned whether its high composite scores carry over to everyday research use, and that matches our experience: it's excellent on hard problems and wordy on easy ones.
The open-weights story, corrected
Many Qwen reviews, including some written this autumn, still say the Max model is closed. That stopped being true in August. Alibaba published Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B, the checkpoint behind Qwen3.8-Max, on Hugging Face and ModelScope (repo timestamps 8 August, announced 12 August). It has 2.4 trillion parameters with about 95 billion active per token, comes in BF16 and FP8 builds, and is the first Max-class Qwen anyone can download. Qwen3.8-27B followed on 14 August under Apache 2.0.
The fine print is where developer reviews turn sour. The open checkpoint is text-only with thinking always on. It has none of the hosted model's vision input, native 1M-token context or built-in tools, and a top-voted Hugging Face discussion calls the release a "huge disappointment" for that reason. It also ships under a custom Qwen3.8-Max License rather than Apache 2.0: internal use is unrestricted, but commercial AI services past $50M revenue or 100M monthly users need a separate licence. At roughly 2.5 TB in FP8, it is a data-centre model, not something to run at home.
Is Qwen really free? What reviewers pay
| Option | Price | What reviewers say |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen Studio / Qwen app | $0 | Universally praised as the best free tier in AI; some users now report time-based caps, and no official limits are published |
| Model Studio API – Qwen3.8-Max | $2 in / $6 out per 1M tokens | Cheaper than Kimi K3 ($3 / $15) and far below Western flagships, but Max's verbosity eats into the saving |
| Token Plan | From ~$6/mo (promo) | Hands-on testers find the $18 tier generous; four heavy tests used 6% of a weekly quota |
| Coding Plan Pro | $50/mo | Popular with solo developers as a cheaper alternative to Claude Code or Codex |
| Third-party "Qwen" apps | Weekly/monthly subscriptions | Avoid. Reviewers say they resell free access |
API and plan prices are from Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and qwen.ai in early November 2026. Promotional prices may revert to list.
Privacy: the review point most users miss
App-store reviewers rarely mention privacy, but it should weigh on your decision. The international apps are run from Singapore and process data through Alibaba Cloud Singapore. Under the privacy policy, de-identified chats and feedback can be used to train models, and there is no in-app opt-out. ChatGPT and Claude let you switch training off, so Qwen is the weaker choice for confidential work. If you need privacy, use the API, which has separate commercial terms, or self-host Qwen3.8-27B.
Pros and cons, from the reviews
What users praise
- Flagship Qwen3.8-Max with a 1M-token context, free
- Deep Research, Thinking mode, image and video tools at no cost
- Strong on long documents, study and research
- Persistent on hard coding and legal-research tasks
- Excellent Chinese and Asian-language output
- Downloadable weights, from the 27B up to a Max-class checkpoint
- Cheap API and coding plans for developers
What users criticise
- Slow, wordy, over-thinks simple questions
- Video generation hangs after the first clip
- Unannounced usage caps and models removed without notice
- Arabic–English mixed text gets scrambled
- Two official apps with different features, confusing ads
- Politically sensitive topics about China are filtered
- Chats can be used for training, no opt-out
- Open Max weights are text-only, under a custom licence
Who rates Qwen highest, and who should skip it
| User type | Typical verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Students & researchers | ★★★★★ | Free Deep Research and long-document analysis; speed matters less |
| Multilingual users (Asia, Middle East, LatAm) | ★★★★½ | Best-in-class Chinese and broad language coverage; Arabic mixed-text bug aside |
| Developers | ★★★★ | Cheap API, Coding Plan, open weights; split on speed and verbosity |
| Casual everyday users | ★★★★ | Assistant app is simple and capable; video and ads disappoint some |
| Creators & fiction writers | ★★★ | Image tools good; video flaky; creative filtering inconsistent |
| Privacy-sensitive / regulated work | ★★ | Training on chats with no opt-out; use the API or self-host instead |
| Journalists covering China | ★★ | Filtering gets in the way |
How Qwen's reviews compare with its rivals
| Assistant | Free tier model | What reviewers prefer it for | Where Qwen wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen | Qwen3.8-Max (flagship) | Free depth, research, multilingual | — |
| ChatGPT | GPT-6 Luna | Speed, agents, voice, privacy toggle | Flagship free; bigger free context |
| Claude | Sonnet 5.5 (limited) | Writing, coding, privacy defaults | No tight rate limit; image and video tools |
| Gemini | 3.6 Flash | Speed, Google Workspace | Better model free; Deep Research free |
| DeepSeek | V4-Flash | Terse, fast reasoning | Full creative toolkit; bigger ecosystem |
| Kimi | K2.7 | Long-horizon coding (K3, paid) | Flagship free; cheaper API than K3 |
For a full feature-by-feature breakdown, see our Tongyi Qwen review.
Final verdict: is Qwen AI good?
Yes, and the reviews back that up. Across almost 200,000 app-store ratings, Qwen averages above four stars, and the reason is consistent: nobody else gives away a model this capable with this many tools attached. Testers place Qwen3.8-Max just under the frontier and well ahead of every other free option.
The criticism is narrow and predictable. If you want instant answers, reliable video, airtight privacy or unfiltered coverage of Chinese politics, reviewers will steer you elsewhere. Install only the apps published by Alibaba Cloud or the Alibaba Qwen Team, and expect the line-up to change soon: Qwen 4 has been teased, named and promised for "next week", but as of 9 November it still isn't out.
Judge it yourself in ten minutes
Open chat.qwen.ai, upload your longest PDF, ask one Thinking-mode question about it and run one Deep Research report. That covers what the five-star reviews praise and what the three-star ones complain about.
Visit Qwen →Frequently asked questions
Is Qwen AI good?
Yes. Users rate the official apps 4.1 to 4.4 stars on Google Play across roughly 180,000 ratings, and testers place Qwen3.8-Max just below the very top models such as Claude Fable 5 and GPT-6 Sol. It is the strongest free assistant available. The main complaints are speed, flaky video generation and content filtering.
What is the rating of the Qwen app?
As of late 2026, "Qwen – Alibaba AI Assistant" holds about 4.4 stars from roughly 167,000 Google Play ratings, and "Qwen Studio" holds about 4.1–4.2 stars from roughly 16,500. A third-party tracker put the iOS app near 4.7 combined in May 2026. Qwen has no meaningful presence on G2, Capterra or Trustpilot.
Which Qwen app is the official one?
Both "Qwen Studio" (developer: Alibaba Cloud, also at chat.qwen.ai) and "Qwen – Alibaba AI Assistant" (developer: Alibaba Qwen Team) are official. Apps such as "Q.AI: Use Qwen 3.8 Models" or "Quen AI" are third-party wrappers, and reviewers report some charge subscriptions for access that is free in the official apps.
Is Qwen 4 out yet?
No, not as of 9 November 2026. Alibaba named Qwen4-Max, Plus, Flash and 27B at its Amsterdam event on 29 October, attendees reported a "next week" promise, and the official Qwen account posted a teaser on 6 November. No model card, weights, API name or price have been published.
Is Qwen free?
Yes. The consumer apps are free with no paid tier, including the flagship Qwen3.8-Max, Deep Research, image and video tools. Some users report time-based usage caps, and Alibaba publishes no official limits. Paid options exist only for developers: the API, Token Plans and the Coding Plan.
Can I download Qwen3.8-Max?
Partly. Alibaba released Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B, the checkpoint behind Qwen3.8-Max, on Hugging Face in August 2026, but it is text-only, lacks the hosted model's vision and native 1M context, and uses a custom licence. It needs a multi-GPU server. For local use, Qwen3.8-27B under Apache 2.0 is the practical option.
Is Qwen safe to use?
The official apps are safe to install, but your de-identified chats may be used for training, with no in-app opt-out, and data is processed by Alibaba Cloud in Singapore. Avoid putting confidential information into the consumer app. Use the API or a self-hosted open-weight model instead.
Why do some users say Qwen is slow?
Qwen3.8-Max reasons at length before answering, producing far more tokens than most rivals at around 40–45 tokens per second. That makes it strong on hard problems and slow on simple ones. Turning off Thinking mode or switching to Qwen3.7-Plus speeds things up.
Ratings and user feedback were gathered from the official Google Play listings, AppBrain and other app trackers, Hugging Face discussions, Reddit, and hands-on reviews by Thomas Wiegold, Trilogy AI, Vals AI and GlobalGPT. Qwen 4 status was checked against Alibaba's Apsara announcements and reporting up to 8 November 2026. User reviews are paraphrased; complaint frequencies are our editorial estimate. Store ratings change daily; check the listing before relying on a figure. This page may contain affiliate links; they do not affect our scoring.