{"name":"Baidu ERNIE API","tagline":"Enterprise AI platform with ERNIE LLMs, image models, and OpenAI-compatible v2 API.","url":"https://cloud.baidu.com/product-s/qianfan_home","category":"models-api","pricing":"paid","price_note":"ERNIE 5.1 ≤32k ~$0.56/$2.54 per 1M, 32k-128k ~$0.85/$3.10; ERNIE 4.5 Turbo 32K/128K ~$0.11/$0.45; ERNIE X1.1 ~$0.14/$0.56; prices in CNY, USD approximate","free_tier":true,"open_source":false,"api":true,"self_host":false,"model_routing":"locked","verdict":"situational","verdict_text":"ERNIE 5.1 ranks high on Chinese leaderboards and the 4.5 Turbo / X1.1 tiers are cheap. The practical path is still mainland Baidu Cloud; international onboarding is harder and pricing is quoted in CNY.","limitations":["Best access path is mainland-China Baidu Cloud; international onboarding is harder.","ERNIE 5.1 and X1.1 are API-only; ERNIE 4.5 weights were released under Apache 2.0 in June 2025, though the hosted Qianfan API remains the practical path for most users.","ERNIE 5.1 pricing is tiered by input length (≤32k vs 32k-128k).","Pure-text reasoning value is weaker than DeepSeek or Qwen on some benchmarks.","ERNIE Lite Pro / Speed Pro are not shown on the current official pricing page."],"strengths":["ERNIE 5.1 ranks high on Chinese leaderboards.","4.5 Turbo and X1.1 tiers are cheap.","OpenAI-compatible v2 API."],"use_for":["Chinese-market applications needing ERNIE models.","Cost-sensitive workloads where 4.5 Turbo/X1.1 pricing wins.","Teams already on Baidu Cloud."],"skip_when":["You need easy international onboarding.","Pure-text reasoning must beat DeepSeek/Qwen.","You need transparent CNY pricing or the omitted Lite Pro/Speed Pro tiers."],"receipts":["https://cloud.baidu.com/product-s/qianfan_home","https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/ERNIE","https://ernie.baidu.com/blog/posts/ernie4.5/","https://cloud.baidu.com/doc/qianfan/s/wmh4sv6ya","https://intl.cloud.baidu.com/en/doc/qianfan/s/Jm8r1826a-intl-en"],"affiliate":"none","evidence_tier":"source-verified","momentum":"steady","featured":false,"last_verified":"2026-08-24","observed_by":"whysanesanders","slug":"ernie-api","canonical_url":"https://noemium.com/tools/ernie-api/","attribution":"Noemium catalog data is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). See https://noemium.com/method/ for how entries are verified."}