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Qwen-Image

closed / Overall score: 4.0(strong)

Qwen-Image is Alibaba's Qwen family of image generation and editing models, designed for complex text rendering and precise editing. Its current release, Qwen-Image 3.0, is served only through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio. The downloadable line runs from the original 20B Qwen-Image and its Edit, Layered and 2512 updates to Qwen-Image-2.1, a unified generation-and-editing model that takes up to ten reference images.

The current release, Qwen-Image 3.0, is hosted-only; Qwen-Image-2.1 remains downloadable under a non-commercial research license and the earlier releases under Apache 2.0. It scores 1/closed on the current release, and the older open line trails it. A separate availability attribute that would record that gap is tracked in #727.

Openness

1 medium confidence

1.0

weights: closed(Qwen-Image 3.0 and 3.0-Pro are listed only as Model Studio API models
data: closed(nothing is published for Qwen-Image 3.0)
code: closed(no code is published for Qwen-Image 3.0)
license: Proprietary(Qwen-Image 3.0 is available only under Model Studio API terms)
prior-release: distributed(Qwen-Image-2.1 (and earlier): downloadable

Qwen-Image 3.0, the current release, can only be used through Alibaba Cloud's API, with no weights published. The newest downloadable release, Qwen-Image-2.1, is licensed for non-commercial use only, and the older Apache 2.0 releases are two generations behind. The open line trails the vendor's closed release. A separate availability attribute that would record that gap is tracked in #727.

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/QwenLM/Qwen-Image@main/LICENSE recorded 2026-09-26
Qwen-Image repository LICENSE body: "Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004".
https://huggingface.co/api/models?author=Qwen&search=Qwen-Image&sort=downloads&direction=-1&limit=100 recorded 2026-09-26
Hugging Face listing of Qwen-Image repositories: Qwen-Image, -Edit, -Edit-2509, -Edit-2511, -Layered, -2512 and -2.1; no Qwen-Image-2.0 or 3.0 repository.
https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen-Image-2.1/raw/main/LICENSE recorded 2026-09-26
Qwen-Image-2.1 license body: "Qwen RESEARCH LICENSE AGREEMENT"; the grant is "FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES ONLY".
https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/qwen-image-api recorded 2026-09-26
Model Studio lists "qwen-image-3.0-pro", "qwen-image-3.0" and "qwen-image-2.0-pro" as API models.

Adoption

4 high confidence

4.0

Adoption is measured as Hugging Face downloads across the seven Qwen-Image generation and editing checkpoints, most of them for the Edit releases. The small prompt-rewriting models are left out.

https://huggingface.co/api/models?author=Qwen&search=Qwen-Image&sort=downloads&direction=-1&limit=100 recorded 2026-09-26
Listing sorted by downloads: Qwen-Image-Edit-2509 465386, Qwen-Image-Edit-2511 317872, Qwen-Image 290124, Qwen-Image-Edit 116513 in the trailing 30 days.

Capability

4 medium confidence

4.0

Qwen-Image 3.0 places above every open-weight image model on the arena, and its downloadable predecessor Qwen-Image-2.1 leads the open models. GPT Image and Nano Banana both place above the hosted flagship.

https://artificialanalysis.ai/image/leaderboard/text-to-image recorded 2026-09-26
Leaderboard entries "Qwen-Image-3.0-Pro" (rank 14, Elo 1088.4, no open weights) and "Qwen-Image-2.1" (rank 18, Elo 1035.4, open weights at huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen-Image-2.1).

Verified 2026-09-26