ERNIE API Pricing (November 2026)
ERNIE API prices run from $0.119 to $2.68 per million tokens across 2 current models. The cheapest is ERNIE 4.5 Turbo at $0.119 input and $0.476 output per million tokens. The flagship, ERNIE 5.1, costs $0.595 input and $2.68 output per million tokens. Every rate below was read on Baidu's own pricing page, on the date shown in its row.
| Model | Input /M | Cache read /M | Output /M | Batch in /M | Batch out /M | Context | Status | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ERNIE 5.1 ernie-5.1 | $0.595 | — | $2.68 | — | — | 128K | Flagship | 2026-10-28 |
ERNIE 4.5 Turbo ernie-4.5-turbo | $0.119 | $0.0298−75% | $0.476 | — | — | 128K | Current | 2026-10-28 |
US dollars per million tokens, list rates on Baidu's own API. Cache read is the price of a cached input token. Batch is the asynchronous API, where the vendor offers one. The date in each row is when we last read it on the vendor's pricing page; it links to that page.
ERNIE API monthly cost estimates
What light use (10M input + 2M output tokens a month), medium use (100M input + 20M output tokens a month), heavy use (1B input + 200M output tokens a month) costs on each current model, at list price with no caching and no batch discount.
| Model | Input / output per 1M | Light · 10M + 2M | Medium · 100M + 20M | Heavy · 1B + 200M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ERNIE 4.5 Turbo | $0.119 / $0.476 | $2.14 | $21.42 | $214 |
| ERNIE 5.1 | $0.595 / $2.68 | $11.31 | $113 | $1,131 |
Prompt caching and the Batch API cut these figures; the next sections show by how much. For your own token counts, use the LLM API cost calculator.
ERNIE API price history
ERNIE API price changes and releases
Releases and pricing from Baidu's Wenxin / ERNIE line on the Qianfan platform. Sourced from Baidu press, PRNewswire, and the Qianfan billing page - verified at publication.
ERNIE models are served through Qianfan (Baidu AI Cloud's MaaS platform), with per-token pay-as-you-go billing in Chinese yuan and OpenAI-compatible endpoints.
PRICINGBaidu publishes ERNIE per-token rates on the Qianfan billing page. ERNIE 5.x models are tiered by input length (0-32K vs 32K-128K); 4.5 Turbo is a single flat rate with a cache-hit discount.
CONSUMERBaidu's consumer assistant ERNIE Bot (Wenxiaoyan) is free to end users and is separate from the paid Qianfan API used for developer integrations.
DeepSeek
DeepSeek reset Chinese-market pricing and quality expectations; ERNIE responds with aggressive price cuts and tight Baidu-cloud integration.
CHINA GIANTAlibaba (Qwen)
Qwen is the broadest Chinese open-weight family with strong international deployment; ERNIE stays proprietary and search-integrated.
OPEN-WEIGHTZhipu (GLM)
GLM ships competitive open-weight coding models with free tiers; ERNIE competes on frontier quality and Baidu ecosystem rather than open weights.
FRONTIEROpenAI
OpenAI sets the global frontier but is largely unavailable inside China; ERNIE is a domestic-first alternative with local data residency.
GLM ARCHITECTZhipu (Z.ai / GLM)
The Beijing lab behind the GLM models, also operating internationally as Z.ai. Spun out of Tsinghua University in 2019, Zhipu ships strong coding/agentic models, multiple free tiers, and open weights — and was the first of China's "Six Tigers" to pursue an IPO. It also sits on the US Entity List.
CLAUDE APIAnthropic
The AI safety-focused lab behind Claude. Founded by ex-OpenAI researchers in 2021, it ships frontier-grade reasoning models through an API that does not retain prompts by default, and publishes a Responsible Scaling Policy, now in version 3.0.
ERNIE API pricing FAQ
Practical questions about Baidu ERNIE API pricing on Qianfan, with the published CNY rates kept separate from currency conversion and workload assumptions.
Q · 01 How much does the Baidu ERNIE API cost?
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ERNIE 5.1 is CNY 4/M input and CNY 18/M output (0-32K tier), which AI//COST stores as $0.5952/$2.6782 at 1 CNY = $0.1475. ERNIE 4.5 Turbo is CNY 0.8/3.2 ($0.119/$0.4761) with a CNY 0.2/M cache-hit rate. Verified 2026-07-11. Q · 02 Why are ERNIE prices shown in USD?
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1 CNY = $0.1475 (2026-07-10) and records the original CNY figures on each model page. Q · 03 Are ERNIE 5.x prices tiered by context length?
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Q · 04 Is ERNIE 5.0 more expensive than ERNIE 5.1?
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$0.885/$3.54) while the newer ERNIE 5.1 refresh is cheaper at CNY 4/18 ($0.5952/$2.6782), so 5.1 is both newer and lower-priced. Q · 05 Is ERNIE Bot the same as the API?
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Baidu was founded in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu and is China's dominant search engine, headquartered in Beijing and listed on NASDAQ (BIDU) and Hong Kong (9888).
Baidu was one of the first Chinese companies to ship a public large language model: ERNIE Bot launched in March 2023. The ERNIE (Wenxin) family has since grown through ERNIE 4.0, the aggressively-priced ERNIE 4.5 and reasoning model ERNIE X1 in 2025, and the current ERNIE 5.x frontier generation.
ERNIE models are served through Qianfan, Baidu AI Cloud's model-as-a-service platform, with per-token billing in Chinese yuan. Baidu prices ERNIE 5.x in context-length tiers and offers a cache-hit discount on ERNIE 4.5 Turbo.
Baidu competes primarily with other Chinese labs - DeepSeek, Alibaba Qwen, Zhipu and Moonshot - on price and Chinese-language quality, while Western frontier labs remain largely inaccessible inside China.