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Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (International) — free tier setup
What you get free
A one-time per-model token quota on the international (dashscope-intl) edition, with a hard expiry. Per the catalog: "cheahjs README: 'Credits: 1 million tokens/model'. Free-LLM quota table: '1M tokens/model (trial) | 1M tokens per model | One-time per model'. Official free-quota page: 'users who activate Alibaba Cloud Model Studio for the first time will receive a free quota that is valid for 90 days'." Category: trial_credit. Two gotchas: (1) the quota expires 90 days after first activation — the clock starts when you activate, not when you first call; (2) this is the international edition, distinct from mainland-China ModelScope (which requires CN real-name verification — not covered here). The 1M-tokens-per-model figure rests on seed repos; official pages confirm the 90-day window but do not restate the amount.
Friction check
| Credit card | unknown |
| Phone verification | unknown |
| Org/membership | Alibaba Cloud (International) account + Model Studio activation required |
| Est. time to first key | ~10-15m (cloud account signup + activation + key) |
| Trains on your prompts | unknown |
The rest of this guide — the key-obtain walkthrough, first request, the limits that will bite you, and the rotation runbook — ships with the Indie field library. What you’ve read above is the real first section, not a blurred preview; the remainder simply isn’t in this page.