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Markdown edition

# Qwen Audio 3.1 widens its voice stack. The 95% price cut needs context

> Qwen Audio 3.1 adds sound creation and understanding. Its API documentation is uneven, and changing billing units complicate the advertised ASR savings.

By BIGCHANGE.AI Editorial

Published: 2026-09-23T15:40:58.970Z
Updated: 2026-09-23T15:40:58.970Z
Canonical: https://bigchange.ai/blog/qwen-audio-3-1-models-api-pricing

![A speaker in a sound-treated booth talks into a studio microphone while a second person listens at a compact mixing console through glass.](https://bigchange.ai/api/media/file/qwen-audio-studio-hero-v1.png)
AI-generated conceptual illustration by BIG CHANGE.

Alibaba’s Qwen team has introduced five Qwen Audio 3.1 models spanning transcription, speech generation and live voice interaction. ASR, TTS-Next and Realtime Plus have documented hosted endpoints. TTS Flash has a published model ID and price, but less complete integration documentation; ASR-Next has no model ID, region or price in the public developer documents reviewed by BIG CHANGE.

[The Decoder reported](https://the-decoder.com/alibaba-launches-qwen-audio-3-1-with-five-new-models-and-slashes-ai-audio-prices-by-up-to-95-percent) Qwen’s advertised cuts of roughly 70% for text to speech, 85% for realtime audio and up to 95% for speech recognition. The billing units matter when checking those figures.

## The big change

- **What changed:** Qwen now covers more of a voice product inside one hosted family, from transcription and generated speech to sound-scene production and live conversation. Its five components do not yet have equally complete developer access.
- **Why it matters:** For developers budgeting transcription or voice services, a minute of audio is no longer enough to price every endpoint. Token-based ASR bills include both the incoming audio and the resulting text; live conversation has four separately priced streams.
- **What to watch:** Alongside ASR-Next access, watch whether independent language and latency tests confirm useful savings. If they do, the wider question is whether voice-agent, transcription and dubbing providers pass those savings into customer prices, and whether rival speech APIs follow.

## The five-model map

| Announced model | Intended job | Documented access on September 23 | Price and practical limit |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Qwen Audio 3.1 ASR** | Streaming, file and short-form transcription; optional speaker diarization on file and short-form endpoints | Hosted WebSocket or HTTP APIs in Singapore and Beijing. The [international guide](https://docs.qwencloud.com/developer-guides/speech/speech-to-text-models) lists 30 languages and 10 Chinese dialect varieties. | Singapore ranges from **$0.15/M audio-input tokens + $0.47/M text-output tokens** for file/short-form to **$0.93 + $0.70** for streaming/message. File transcription allows 12 hours/2GB; short-form allows 5 minutes/2GB. |
| **Qwen Audio 3.1 ASR-Next** | Speaker attribution and timestamps plus recognition of emotion, ambient events and machine sounds | Announced by Qwen; no public API model ID, region, rate or limit found in the current Model Studio and QwenCloud documentation | **Not publicly documented** |
| **Qwen Audio 3.1 TTS** | Multilingual speech, cross-language voice transfer and prompt control over delivery | `qwen-audio-3.1-tts-flash` appears in Alibaba’s price notice. The reviewed [voice-cloning API](https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/voice-clone-design-http-api) still names 3.0 TTS Flash. | Singapore: **$0.23/M text-input tokens + $1.87/M audio-output tokens**. Current public limits were not specified in the reviewed 3.1 material. |
| **Qwen Audio 3.1 TTS-Next** | Joint generation of speech, effects and background audio | Hosted non-streaming HTTPS API in Beijing, documented for Chinese and English | **$0.848/M input tokens + $1.696/M output tokens**. Up to 3,000 input characters; four minutes for podcast output, two minutes otherwise. |
| **Qwen Audio 3.1 Realtime Plus** | Full-duplex voice conversation with interruption and tool calls | Hosted WebSocket API in Singapore and Beijing. The [guide](https://docs.qwencloud.com/developer-guides/speech/qwen-audio-realtime) lists 11 languages. | Singapore: **$0.80/M text input, $6.40/M audio input, $6.40/M text output and $24/M audio output**. It retains up to 50 audio turns or 300 seconds of audio history. |

These are hosted API products. BIG CHANGE found no downloadable 3.1 model weights or model-weight licence. The MIT licence in QwenAudio’s GitHub repository covers the project website, so it should not be read as a licence for the models.

The language count also depends on the document. Qwen’s [verified launch post](https://www.sina.cn/news/detail/5346330620985983.html) says ASR covers 30 languages and 16 Chinese dialects; the international API guide names 30 languages and 10 dialect varieties. Developers should use the list attached to the endpoint they can actually call.

## The 95% claim does not map to the public rate table

Alibaba’s [price-change notice](https://www.alibabacloud.com/en/notice/model_studio_price_reduction_notice_for_selected_audio_models_891?_p_lc=1) took effect on September 22. Its exact comparison covers `qwen-audio-3.0-realtime-flash`, rather than the new 3.1 Realtime Plus. The Singapore reductions are calculated as (old rate − new rate) / old rate:

| Realtime Flash stream | Before (USD) | After (USD) | Reduction |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Text input, per million tokens | $0.45 | $0.23 | 48.89% |
| Audio input, per million tokens | $4.50 | $0.93 | 79.33% |
| Text output, per million tokens | $4.50 | $0.70 | 84.44% |
| Output (text + audio), per million tokens | $15.00 | $1.87 | **87.53%** |

The same notice moves 3.1 TTS Flash from $0.15 per 10,000 characters to separate input- and output-token rates. The [current pricing page](https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/model-pricing) similarly lists 3.1 ASR by input and output tokens while 3.0 ASR charges per audio second with free output. A percentage across either pair depends on the text, audio duration and tokenization. The public tables reviewed here therefore do not reproduce an exact 95% ASR reduction.

## Independent evidence still belongs to Qwen 3.0

No independent test of the five 3.1 models was available in the sources reviewed on launch day. Qwen’s own [ASR project page](https://github.com/QwenAudio/QwenAudio.github.io/blob/4b61d6f5855d8bf1b8747895a3c54565be565ae9/qwen-audio-3.1-asr/README.md) reports benchmark results, but says they have not been independently rerun.

Artificial Analysis ranks [Qwen Audio 3.0 TTS Plus](https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-speech/leaderboard/provider-voice) second in its provider-voice arena (all accents and categories) at 1,259 Elo, with a 95% confidence interval of plus or minus 17 and 1,447 blind comparison samples. In a separate [speech-agent arena](https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/announcing-the-speech-agent-arena), Qwen Audio 3.0 Realtime Plus scored 699 preference Elo with 1.54 seconds to first audio. Its participants compare hidden models in live conversations across assigned scenarios.

## Sources

- [Alibaba launches Qwen Audio 3.1 with five new models](https://the-decoder.com/alibaba-launches-qwen-audio-3-1-with-five-new-models-and-slashes-ai-audio-prices-by-up-to-95-percent) — Discovery report summarizing the five-model release and attributing approximate TTS, realtime and ASR price reductions to Qwen. BIG CHANGE checked the rates against Alibaba’s own tables.
- [Qwen Audio 3.1 launch post](https://www.sina.cn/news/detail/5346330620985983.html) — Verified Qwen account post naming the five models and their intended capabilities. Capability and speed statements remain vendor claims.
- [Model Studio price reduction notice for selected audio models](https://www.alibabacloud.com/en/notice/model_studio_price_reduction_notice_for_selected_audio_models_891?_p_lc=1) — Official September 22 price change with exact Singapore before-and-after rates for 3.0 Realtime Flash and a billing-unit change for 3.1 TTS Flash.
- [Model Studio model pricing](https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/model-pricing) — Current official pricing by model, modality and region, including 3.1 ASR and Realtime Plus.
- [QwenCloud speech-to-text models](https://docs.qwencloud.com/developer-guides/speech/speech-to-text-models) — Current ASR endpoint IDs, access methods, language lists, diarization support and duration limits.
- [QwenCloud Realtime Audio Chat](https://docs.qwencloud.com/developer-guides/speech/qwen-audio-realtime) — Current 3.1 Realtime Plus WebSocket example, voice and language support, and retained conversation limits.
- [Qwen Audio 3.1 TTS-Next](https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/qwen-audio-3-1-tts-next) — Official Beijing-only API availability, prices, languages, input length and output-duration limits.
- [Qwen Audio 3.1 ASR project page](https://github.com/QwenAudio/QwenAudio.github.io/blob/4b61d6f5855d8bf1b8747895a3c54565be565ae9/qwen-audio-3.1-asr/README.md) — Immutable Qwen project page for ASR and ASR-Next capabilities and vendor-reported benchmarks; it says the results were not independently reproduced.
- [Artificial Analysis Text to Speech leaderboard](https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-speech/leaderboard/provider-voice) — Blind preference result for the predecessor Qwen Audio 3.0 TTS Plus, including sample count and confidence interval.
- [Artificial Analysis Speech Agent Arena](https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/announcing-the-speech-agent-arena) — Separate preference and time-to-first-audio result for Qwen Audio 3.0 Realtime Plus; not a 3.1 evaluation.
- [Voice cloning HTTP API reference](https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/voice-clone-design-http-api) — The current target-model examples name 3.0 TTS Flash. They do not independently confirm a 3.1 synthesis integration path.