Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)

by Alibaba Cloud

Don’t want to wire up the Alibaba Tongyi Audio API? Drop the file here.

The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free: a recording up to 20 minutes transcribes in full, a longer one is previewed, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export, and credits never expire.

Alibaba's Tongyi multimodal model exposed for transcription + audio understanding.

API  ·  tiered RMB-per-token / per-second

TL;DR

Best for mandarin-heavy multimodal workflows that want one foundation model for audio + reasoning. Pricing: tiered RMB-per-token / per-second.

Category
Transcription APIs
Pricing
tiered RMB-per-token / per-second
Platforms
API

What it is

Tongyi is Alibaba's flagship LLM family; Qwen-Audio is the audio-understanding variant exposed via DashScope. In addition to plain transcription, it provides audio-grounded question answering, captioning, and content classification. Strongest in Mandarin. China-first; international tenants should verify region availability. Best fit: mandarin-heavy multimodal workflows that want one foundation model for audio + reasoning. Caveats: china-first; international availability via alibaba cloud international. Pricing as listed: tiered RMB-per-token / per-second. Directory tags: commercial-api, regional-asia, foundation-model. Last vendor-page check: 2026-05-12. The product slots into the broader voice-AI tooling landscape and is best evaluated head-to-head with adjacent vendors in its subcategory; verify current language coverage, region availability, and compliance terms on the vendor's public docs at time of build.

Best for: Mandarin-heavy multimodal workflows that want one foundation model for audio + reasoning.
Watch out for: China-first; international availability via Alibaba Cloud International.

Install / use

Alibaba Cloud DashScope: Qwen-Audio family

What people actually do with Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)-style transcription

The tool is the means. These are the jobs — each one priced at published rates, each one wired up on its own page.

Wire it into Amazon S3n8nMake.comGoogle DriveZapierSlack

Features

Speaker diarizationNo
Word-level timestampsNo
Streaming / real-timeNo
Languages supportedNone
HIPAA eligibleNo

Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) vs Whipscribe

FeatureAlibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)Whipscribe
CategoryTranscription APIsTranscription APIs
PricingNot verified$6–$24 one-time packs (credits never expire) · first 20 minutes free
Speaker identificationNot verifiedNamed in the summary, key quotes and chapters
Word timestampsNot verifiedYes
StreamingNot verifiedNo
Languages—99
PlatformsAPIWeb, API, MCP

Alternatives to Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)

Frequently asked about Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)

How much does Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) cost?

Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) is a paid product — published pricing: tiered RMB-per-token / per-second. Pricing changes; verify on the vendor's own page before budgeting.

What platforms does Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) support?

Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) is an API — you call it from whatever you build, on any platform with an HTTP client.

How do I get started with Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)?

Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) is used through its API: get a key from the vendor, then call it from your own code. There is no desktop app to install.

What are the limitations of Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)?

China-first; international availability via Alibaba Cloud International.

Who is Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) best for?

Mandarin-heavy multimodal workflows that want one foundation model for audio + reasoning.

Is Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) open source?

No. Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) is a proprietary API from Alibaba Cloud. If you need source you can read and run yourself, the open-source tools in this directory are the place to look.

Who makes Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)?

Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) is made by Alibaba Cloud.

What kind of tool is Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)?

In this directory Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) is filed under commercial api, regional asia, foundation model as a API.

What are the alternatives to Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)?

There is a side-by-side page at /tools/alibaba-tongyi-stt-alternatives comparing Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) with the closest tools in the same category on price, platform and features.

Can I automate Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)-style transcription without running it myself?

Yes. If what you want is transcripts rather than the tool itself, Whipscribe does the same job as a hosted API: submit a file or URL, poll a job id, pull the result as txt, json, srt, vtt or docx. $0.012 a minute — about $0.72 an audio hour — bought as credits that never expire. The automation recipes on this site show it wired to Drive folders, Zoom recordings, S3 buckets and no-code platforms.

How is Whipscribe different from Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)?

Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) is another vendor's product; Whipscribe is a per-minute transcription service. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and never used for training, and every job returns five formats plus an AI summary, quotes and topics. The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export.

What does transcription cost if I use Whipscribe instead of Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio)?

$0.012 a minute — about $0.72 an audio hour — bought as credits that never expire. There is no subscription and no monthly minimum: a 3-hour recording is about $2.16, a thousand-hour archive is about $720 once. The first 20 minutes of any recording are transcribed free, and a pack from $6 (500 minutes) transcribes the rest and opens every export, so you can see what your recording holds before paying anything.

Where is the Alibaba Tongyi Audio (Qwen-Audio) category heading?

Three things are moving across the whole speech-to-text market right now: summaries, action items and speaker insights generated on top of the transcript rather than sold separately; private, secured deployment where the audio never leaves a boundary you control; and agent access — transcription exposed as a tool that Claude, Cursor or a workflow runner can call directly. Whipscribe ships all three today: per-job insights, our own servers, and an MCP server.

Whipscribe is a hosted transcription service. If you want transcripts without running infrastructure, paste a URL or drop a file in the form below — you'll have a transcript in seconds.

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