Alibaba's new Qwen4-Max is live for just two weeks, at as little as 8% of the normal price, and it plugs into Claude Code
Alibaba's Qwen team opened a preview of Qwen4-Max, its next flagship, pitched at coding, agent work and front-end builds. On the Token Plan, a monthly credit subscription that works with Claude Code, Cursor, Qwen Code, Qoder and other tools, the qwen4-max-preview model costs as little as 20% of the standard credit rate during the preview, and 8% for calls between 22:00 and 08:00 Beijing time. The preview ends at 24:00 on November 25, 2026 (UTC+8) and the model is retired after that. Qwen also says early access is open in QwenWork, Qoder, the Qwen app and QwenStudio.
Why it matters
It's a cheap, time-boxed way to test a new frontier-class coding model inside the agent tools you already use, before any regular price is announced.
Who it's for
Developers who use Claude Code, Cursor or other agent tools and want to benchmark a new model on real work for a few dollars.
How to try it
- Subscribe to a Token Plan Individual tier at qwencloud.com and create a Token Plan API key.
- Point Claude Code (or another supported tool) at the Token Plan endpoint and set the model to qwen4-max-preview.
- Run the same real task you'd give your usual model and compare results and credit use; heavy runs are cheapest between 22:00 and 08:00 Beijing time.
- Finish testing before November 25, 24:00 (UTC+8), when the preview model is retired.
Plan & availability: Token Plan Individual: Lite $6/month (new-user price $3), Essential $10 ($5 for new users), Standard $18, Pro $43. The new-user price is for accounts that have never bought a Token Plan Individual subscription and runs until 23:59:59 on November 30, 2026 (UTC+8). Preview window: 10:00 November 11 to 24:00 November 25, 2026 (UTC+8). Token Plan is for interactive coding and agent tools, not app backends. QwenWork also has a $0 plan (500 signup credits plus 200 daily credits, limited time), but we couldn't confirm what a Qwen4-Max task costs there. No regular API price announced. Checked on docs.qwencloud.com and alibabacloud.com on November 11, 2026.
Source: @Qwen on docs.qwencloud.com ↗
Written by AgentStackList from the original post. Checked Nov 11, 2026. Features, plans and availability can change, so confirm on the source before you rely on it.
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