Qwen

Entity page for Qwen — Alibaba's model family and one of the most-covered open-weight lines in this knowledge base.

Overview

Qwen (通义千问) is developed by Alibaba's Qwen team. The 2026 story has two chapters:

1. Open-weight leadership — Qwen3.6-27B (Apache 2.0) as frontier-adjacent dense model
2. Closed-weight pivot — Qwen3.7 Max/Plus competing with Opus and GPT-5.5 via API

Current models (Jun 2026)

Model	Type	Highlights
Qwen3.7 Max	Closed API	90/100 BenchLM, 69.7 Terminal-Bench 2.0, 44.5 Apex, 80.4% SWE-Verified, 1M context
Qwen-AgentWorld-397B-A17B	Open MoE	58.71 AgentWorldBench (beats GPT-5.4), 7-domain LWM, 256K context
Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B	Open MoE	56.39 AgentWorldBench, 7-domain LWM, Apache 2.0
Qwen3.7 Plus	Closed multimodal	Vision+video agent, $0.32/$1.28
Qwen3.6-27B	Open dense	77.2% SWE-Bench Verified; beats 397B MoE sibling
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	Open MoE	35B total, 3B active; thinking preservation
Qwen-SEA-LION-v4.5-27B	Regional (AISG)	SEA languages, distilled from Qwen3.5-397B

Strategic shifts

Dense beats MoE (Apr 2026)

Qwen3.6-27B proved a 27B dense model can outperform Alibaba's own 397B MoE on agentic coding — challenging the "bigger MoE always wins" narrative.

→ Qwen36 27b Dense Beats Moe Agentic Coding Analysis 2026 06 03

Open → closed pivot (May–Jun 2026)

Qwen3.7 Max moves to proprietary API-only distribution, competing for enterprise revenue against Claude and GPT. Open-weight community goodwill from Qwen3.6 does not automatically transfer.

→ Qwen37 Max Plus Closed Weight Frontier Agent Era 2026 06 16

Caveat: Qwen3.7 Max verbosity (~4× median output tokens) narrows stated cost advantages.

Key benchmarks

Model	SWE-bench Pro	SWE-bench Verified	Terminal-Bench 2.0	Apex	Notes
Qwen3.7 Max	60.6%	80.4%	69.7	44.5	35-hour autonomous kernel demo, 1M context
Qwen-AgentWorld-397B	—	—	—	—	58.71 AgentWorldBench, 7-domain LWM
Qwen3.6-27B	—	77.2%	—	—	Perfect 100/100 tool-eval-bench
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	—	competitive	—	—	Thinking preservation

Key articles

Topic	Article
Qwen3.7-Max + AgentWorld (Jul 2026)	Qwen3 7 Max Agent Centric Era Long Horizon Execution 2026 07 01
Qwen3.7 Max & Plus	Qwen37 Max Plus Closed Weight Frontier Agent Era 2026 06 16
Qwen3.7 agent comparison	Qwen37 Max Frontier Agent Comparison 2026 05 20
Qwen3.6-27B dense analysis	Qwen36 27b Dense Beats Moe Agentic Coding Analysis 2026 06 03
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	Qwen36 35b A3b Agentic Coding Thinking Preservation 2026 04 17
SEA-LION regional	Qwen Sea Lion V45 27b Regional Specialization 2026 05 20
vs Gemma 4B	Qwen Vs Gemma 4b Comparison
Open agents showdown	Open Source Agents Showdown Qwen36 27b V4pro Gemma4 2026 05 19
Benchmark compilation	Frontier Models Benchmark Compilation 2026 04 15
Embodied AI (Robot)	Qwen Robot Suite Embodied Ai Navigation Manipulation World Model 2026 06 19

Related

• Concepts: Frontier Models, Mixture Of Experts, Agentic Coding
• Compared to: DeepSeek-V4-Pro, Gemma 4, GLM-5.2, Claude Opus
• Deployment: Howto Multi Model Routing Layer, Howto Vllm Deployment Guide