Qwen Code Drops Free OAuth Tier

The “Qwen is going closed source” framing is overstated: the hosted free lane shrank, but the Qwen team still publicly says it embraces open source and continues releasing open models.

• –The official Qwen Code weekly update says the free OAuth tier was discontinued on April 15, 2026 and points users to paid or third-party providers
• –Qwen’s about page still describes the project as open source and links to GitHub, ModelScope, Hugging Face, and other open resources
• –The confusion comes from mixing up open weights, free hosted access, and closed commercial APIs; those are different things
• –For developers, the practical impact is cost and convenience, not a hard lockout from the model family
• –Exclusive partnerships here look like revenue and distribution optimization, not a license flip to closed source