Qwen - OpenClaw

Qwen Cloud is an official external OpenClaw provider plugin with canonical id qwen. It targets Qwen Cloud / Alibaba DashScope Standard and Coding Plan endpoints, keeps legacy modelstudio ids working as a compatibility alias, and exposes the Qwen Portal token flow as a separate provider, qwen-oauth.

Property	Value
Provider	`qwen`
Portal provider	`qwen-oauth`
Preferred env var	`QWEN_API_KEY`
Also accepted (compat)	`MODELSTUDIO_API_KEY`, `DASHSCOPE_API_KEY`
API style	OpenAI-compatible

For qwen3.6-plus, use a Standard (pay-as-you-go) endpoint. It is not available on the Coding Plan endpoints.

Install plugin

qwen ships as an official external plugin, not bundled with core. Install it and restart Gateway:

openclaw plugins install @openclaw/qwen-provider
openclaw gateway restart

Getting started

Choose your plan type and follow the setup steps.

Coding Plan (subscription)
Standard (pay-as-you-go)
Qwen OAuth / Portal

Best for: subscription-based access through the Qwen Coding Plan.

Get your API key

Create or copy an API key from home.qwencloud.com/api-keys.

Run onboarding

For the Global endpoint:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-api-key

For the China endpoint:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-api-key-cn

Set a default model

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "qwen/qwen3.5-plus" },
    },
  },
}

Verify the model is available

openclaw models list --provider qwen

Legacy modelstudio-* auth-choice ids and modelstudio/... model refs still work as compatibility aliases, but new setup flows should prefer the canonical qwen-* auth-choice ids and qwen/... model refs. If you define an exact custom models.providers.modelstudio entry with another api value, that custom provider owns modelstudio/... refs instead of the Qwen compatibility alias.

Best for: pay-as-you-go access through the Standard Model Studio endpoint, including models like qwen3.6-plus that are not available on the Coding Plan.

Get your API key

Create or copy an API key from home.qwencloud.com/api-keys.

Run onboarding

For the Global endpoint:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-standard-api-key

For the China endpoint:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-standard-api-key-cn

Set a default model

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "qwen/qwen3.5-plus" },
    },
  },
}

Verify the model is available

openclaw models list --provider qwen

Best for: a Qwen Portal token against https://portal.qwen.ai/v1.See Qwen OAuth / Portal for the dedicated provider page and migration notes.

Provide your portal token

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-oauth

Set a default model

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "qwen-oauth/qwen3.5-plus" },
    },
  },
}

Verify the model is available

openclaw models list --provider qwen-oauth

qwen-oauth uses the same QWEN_API_KEY env var name as the Qwen Cloud provider, but stores auth under the qwen-oauth provider id when configured through OpenClaw onboarding.

Plan types and endpoints

Plan	Region	Auth choice	Endpoint
Coding Plan (subscription)	China	`qwen-api-key-cn`	`coding.dashscope.aliyuncs.com/v1`
Coding Plan (subscription)	Global	`qwen-api-key`	`coding-intl.dashscope.aliyuncs.com/v1`
Qwen Portal	Global	`qwen-oauth`	`portal.qwen.ai/v1`
Standard (pay-as-you-go)	China	`qwen-standard-api-key-cn`	`dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1`
Standard (pay-as-you-go)	Global	`qwen-standard-api-key`	`dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1`

The provider auto-selects the endpoint based on your auth choice. Canonical choices use the qwen-* family; modelstudio-* remains compatibility-only. Override with a custom baseUrl in config.

Manage keys: home.qwencloud.com/api-keys | Docs: docs.qwencloud.com

Built-in catalog

OpenClaw ships this Qwen static catalog. The catalog is endpoint-aware: Coding Plan configs omit models that only work on the Standard endpoint.

Model ref	Input	Context	Notes
`qwen/qwen3.5-plus`	text, image	1,000,000	Default model
`qwen/qwen3.6-plus`	text, image	1,000,000	Standard endpoints only
`qwen/qwen3-max-2026-01-23`	text	262,144	Qwen Max line
`qwen/qwen3-coder-next`	text	262,144	Coding
`qwen/qwen3-coder-plus`	text	1,000,000	Coding
`qwen/MiniMax-M2.5`	text	1,000,000	Reasoning enabled
`qwen/glm-5`	text	202,752	GLM
`qwen/glm-4.7`	text	202,752	GLM
`qwen/kimi-k2.5`	text, image	262,144	Moonshot AI via Alibaba
`qwen-oauth/qwen3.5-plus`	text, image	1,000,000	Qwen Portal default

Availability can still vary by endpoint and billing plan even when a model is present in the static catalog.

Thinking controls

qwen/MiniMax-M2.5 is the only reasoning-enabled model in the built-in catalog. For reasoning models on the qwen family, the provider maps OpenClaw thinking levels to DashScope’s top-level enable_thinking request flag: disabled thinking sends enable_thinking: false, any other level sends enable_thinking: true. Custom models can opt into an alternate chat-template thinking payload by setting compat.thinkingFormat: "qwen-chat-template" on the model entry.

Multimodal add-ons

The qwen plugin exposes multimodal capabilities on the Standard DashScope endpoints only, not the Coding Plan endpoints:

Image and video understanding via qwen-vl-max-latest
Wan video generation via wan2.6-t2v (default), wan2.6-i2v, wan2.6-r2v, wan2.6-r2v-flash, wan2.7-r2v

Media understanding is auto-resolved from the configured Qwen auth; no extra config is needed. Make sure you are on a Standard (pay-as-you-go) endpoint for media understanding to work. To make Qwen the default video provider:

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      videoGenerationModel: { primary: "qwen/wan2.6-t2v" },
    },
  },
}

Video-generation limits: 1 output video per request, up to 1 input image (image-to-video), up to 4 input videos (video-to-video), max 10 seconds duration. Supports size, aspectRatio, resolution, audio, and watermark. Reference image/video inputs require remote http(s) URLs; local file paths are rejected up front because the DashScope video endpoint does not accept uploaded local buffers for those references.

See Video generation for shared tool parameters, provider selection, and failover behavior.

Advanced configuration

Qwen 3.6 Plus availability

qwen3.6-plus is available on the Standard (pay-as-you-go) endpoints:

China: dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
Global: dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1

If the Coding Plan endpoints return an “unsupported model” error for qwen3.6-plus, switch to Standard (pay-as-you-go) instead of the Coding Plan endpoint/key pair.OpenClaw’s Qwen static catalog does not advertise qwen3.6-plus on Coding Plan endpoints, but an explicitly configured qwen/qwen3.6-plus entry under models.providers.qwen.models is honored on Coding Plan base URLs, so you can opt that model in if Aliyun enables it on your subscription. The upstream API still decides whether the call succeeds.

Video generation region routing

OpenClaw maps the configured Qwen region to the matching DashScope AIGC host before submitting a video job:

Global/Intl: https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com
China: https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com

A normal models.providers.qwen.baseUrl pointing at either the Coding Plan or Standard Qwen hosts still routes video generation to the matching regional DashScope video endpoint.

Streaming usage compatibility

Native Qwen endpoints advertise streaming usage compatibility on the shared openai-completions transport, so DashScope-compatible custom provider ids targeting the same native hosts inherit the same behavior without requiring the built-in qwen provider id specifically. This applies to both Coding Plan and Standard endpoints:

https://coding.dashscope.aliyuncs.com/v1
https://coding-intl.dashscope.aliyuncs.com/v1
https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1

Capability plan

The qwen plugin is being positioned as the vendor home for the full Qwen Cloud surface, not just coding/text models.

Text/chat models: available through the plugin
Tool calling, structured output, thinking: inherited from the OpenAI-compatible transport
Image generation: planned at the provider-plugin layer
Image/video understanding: available through the plugin on the Standard endpoint
Speech/audio: planned at the provider-plugin layer
Memory embeddings/reranking: planned through the embedding adapter surface
Video generation: available through the plugin through the shared video-generation capability

Environment and daemon setup

If the Gateway runs as a daemon (launchd/systemd), make sure QWEN_API_KEY is available to that process (for example, in ~/.openclaw/.env or via env.shellEnv).

Model selection

Choosing providers, model refs, and failover behavior.

Video generation

Shared video tool parameters and provider selection.

Alibaba Model Studio

Bundled Wan video generation provider on the same DashScope platform.

Troubleshooting

General troubleshooting and FAQ.

​Install plugin

​Getting started

​Plan types and endpoints

​Built-in catalog

​Thinking controls

​Multimodal add-ons

​Advanced configuration

​Related

Model selection

Video generation

Alibaba Model Studio

Troubleshooting

Install plugin

Getting started

Plan types and endpoints

Built-in catalog

Thinking controls

Multimodal add-ons

Advanced configuration

Related