Qwen Cloud Provider Plugin for OpenClaw: Setup & Configuration

Qwen Cloud is an official external OpenClaw provider plugin with canonical id qwen. It targets Qwen Cloud / Alibaba DashScope Standard and Coding Plan endpoints, exposes Token Plan as qwen-token-plan, keeps modelstudio as a compatibility alias, and independently owns Alibaba's documented bailian-token-plan custom-provider id.

Tip

qwen3.7-plus and qwen3.6-plus work with Coding Plan and Standard endpoints. For qwen3.7-max or qwen3.6-flash, use a Standard (pay-as-you-go) endpoint.

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

Pick your plan type and follow the configuration steps.

Coding Plan (subscription)

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

Get your API key

Generate 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

Note

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.

Standard (pay-as-you-go)

Best for: pay-as-you-go access through the Standard Model Studio endpoint, including qwen3.7-max and qwen3.6-flash, which are not available on the Coding Plan.

Get your API key

Generate 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

Note

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.

Token Plan (Team Edition)

Best for: credit-based team subscription access to Qwen and supported third-party models through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio.

Get your dedicated key

Assign a Token Plan seat and create its dedicated sk-sp-... key. Token Plan, Coding Plan, and pay-as-you-go keys are not interchangeable. See the Global Token Plan overview or China Token Plan overview.

Run onboarding

For the Global / International endpoint in Singapore:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-token-plan

For the China endpoint in Beijing:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice qwen-token-plan-cn

Verify the provider

openclaw models list --provider qwen-token-plan
openclaw agent --model qwen-token-plan/qwen3.7-plus --message "Reply with: token plan ready"

Note

Alibaba's OpenClaw guide uses bailian-token-plan for a manual custom provider. The plugin registers that id as a compatibility owner, but new configs should use qwen-token-plan. An exact custom models.providers.bailian-token-plan entry keeps ownership of its configured transport and catalog; it is never merged into the canonical OpenAI catalog.

Warning

Use Token Plan only for interactive OpenClaw sessions. Do not select it for cron jobs, unattended scripts, or application backends. Alibaba states that non-interactive use can suspend the subscription or revoke its API key.

Plan types and endpoints

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.

Tip

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.

Note

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

Token Plan catalog

Token Plan uses a separate exact-string allowlist. Image-generation-only plan models are not included here because they use different APIs.

Thinking controls

qwen3.7-max, qwen3.7-plus, qwen3.6-flash, and qwen3.6-plus are reasoning-enabled 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.

Token Plan models are also marked reasoning-capable. kimi-k2.7-code and MiniMax-M2.5 are thinking-only, so OpenClaw keeps thinking enabled even when the session requests /think off. DeepSeek V4 maps minimal through high to the service's high effort and maps xhigh or max to max. GLM 5.2 accepts the full minimal through max range; GLM 5.1 and GLM 5 accept through xhigh, and all three default to high. Other hybrid models follow the requested on/off state.

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 qwen3.6-plus
• 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.

Note

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

Advanced configuration

Qwen 3.6 and 3.7 availability

qwen3.7-plus and qwen3.6-plus are offered on Coding Plan and Standard endpoints. qwen3.7-max and qwen3.6-flash are available only on Standard. The Standard (pay-as-you-go) endpoints are:

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

OpenClaw removes qwen3.7-max and qwen3.6-flash from Coding Plan catalogs. If a Coding Plan endpoint returns an "unsupported model" error for either, use the corresponding Standard endpoint and key instead.

Video generation region routing

Before submitting a video job, OpenClaw maps the configured Qwen region to the appropriate DashScope AIGC host:

• 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 that behavior without requiring the built-in qwen provider id specifically. This applies to Coding Plan, Standard, and Token Plan 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
• https://token-plan.ap-southeast-1.maas.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
• https://token-plan.cn-beijing.maas.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 and 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), ensure QWEN_API_KEY or QWEN_TOKEN_PLAN_API_KEY is available to that process (for example, in ~/.openclaw/.env or via env.shellEnv).

Related

• 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.