Qwen4-Max-Preview goes live in Qwen Chat and Alibaba's Model Studio Token Plan, as a two-week preview with a 1M-token context

Qwen4-Max-Preview is out as a two-week preview. Alibaba's Qwen Chat lists it in its public model list (chat.qwen.ai/api/models), and Alibaba Cloud Model Studio offers it to developers through its Token Plan, a monthly credits subscription for individual developers. ArtificialWatch's radar caught it on Qwen Chat's list and sent an early-version alert at 02:11 UTC on November 11. ArtificialWatch read the Qwen Chat listing at 02:47 UTC and Model Studio's pages at 03:52 UTC.

WHAT ALIBABA'S PAGES SAY

• Qwen Chat lists it as qwen4.0-max-preview. Model Studio also accepts qwen4-max-preview and bills both as qwen4.0-max-preview.
• Context window: 1,000,000 tokens, per Qwen Chat's listing.
• Capabilities: Qwen Chat flags vision, documents, video, audio, thinking and search; Model Studio lists reasoning, visual understanding and text generation.
• The preview runs from 10:00 on November 11 to 24:00 on November 25, Beijing time (02:00 UTC November 11 to 16:00 UTC November 25). Model Studio says the model will be retired when the preview ends.
• During the preview, Token Plan calls use as little as 20% of the standard credit rate, and 4% between 22:00 and 08:00 Beijing time, per Alibaba.
• Alibaba's description pitches expert knowledge, complex reasoning, math, coding, long multi-step agent tasks with tool use, and front-end design. Those are Alibaba's own claims.
• On November 10, Qwen Chat's front-end code had already made qwen4.0-max-preview the default model for agent mode.

WHAT IS NOT OUT

• A pay-as-you-go price. Model Studio's pricing page has no Qwen 4 entry, so the Token Plan is the only paid route so far, and OpenRouter has no Qwen 4 id (read 03:53 UTC).
• An announcement. Alibaba's Qwen account had not posted about it by 03:53 UTC.
• The final Qwen 4 Max. This is a time-limited preview, so ArtificialWatch's main Qwen 4 Max alert is still armed for the final model.

WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW

When the final Qwen 4 Max ships and at what price, how the preview differs from it, and when the smaller Qwen 4 models (Plus, Flash and an open-weight 27B, all unconfirmed) follow. Alibaba has given no date for the final model; the preview ends November 25. Alibaba Cloud's CTO said 'Qwen4 next week' on October 29, per one attendee; the preview arrived 13 days later.