How Qwen's Free Strategy is Winning Over Cash-Strapped Students

When Alibaba's Qwen App announced it would offer its core features without charge, college students took notice. What began as a corporate decision quickly turned into a campus phenomenon, with students calculating exactly how much they could save by ditching their paid subscriptions.

"It's like having five memberships in one," explains Li Wei, a junior at Beijing University. "Between PPT templates, academic databases, translation services and writing tools, I was spending nearly 2000 yuan each year."

The Subscription Fatigue Factor

Students describe a frustrating cycle of "temporary upgrades" - paying for short-term access to complete assignments. Zhang Yiming, an economics major, recalls: "I'd buy a week of premium access just to download research papers, then another subscription to format my bibliography. It adds up fast."

Qwen eliminates this piecemeal approach by bundling high-demand features:

• Document formatting with 1000+ university templates
• AI-powered writing assistance for essays and reports
• Instant translation across multiple languages
• Research tools with citation generation
• Presentation builders with professional layouts

Beyond Savings: Academic Game-Changer

The app's impact goes beyond financial relief. After the recent College English Test, Xiaohongshu buzzed with posts about students who'd predicted essay topics using Qwen's analysis tools. Others praise its time-saving formatting features that turn hours of manual adjustments into minutes.

"What used to take me all night - fixing margins, generating tables of contents - now happens automatically," says computer science student Wang Jing. "It's not cheating; it's working smarter."

Why This Resonates Now

The timing couldn't be better. As educational AI tools proliferate, many split core functions across paid tiers. Qwen's all-access approach taps into growing frustration with these "membership walls."

While competitors nickel-and-dime users for basic features, Qwen bets that student loyalty today could mean professional subscriptions tomorrow. For now though, undergrads are just happy to keep their wallets closed.

Key Points:

• Annual savings equivalent to iPad purchase (≈2000 yuan)
• Consolidates multiple paid services into one free platform
• Particularly valuable for academic writing and test prep
• Addresses widespread frustration with fragmented paid tools