Alibaba Cloud DashScope

Invoke supports Alibaba Cloud’s DashScope image generation service, giving access to the Qwen Image family and Wan 2.6 text-to-image. Qwen Image is particularly strong at bilingual (Chinese / English) text rendering.

Getting an API Key

1. Sign in to Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (the international DashScope portal).
2. Enable DashScope and activate the image generation models you plan to use.
3. Create an API key from the API Keys section of the console.

Configuration

Add your key to api_keys.yaml in your Invoke root directory:

external_alibabacloud_api_key: "your-dashscope-api-key"

# Optional — default is the international endpoint. Use the China endpoint if your account lives there:
#   https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com
external_alibabacloud_base_url: "https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com"

Restart Invoke for the change to take effect.

International vs. China endpoints

DashScope has separate international (dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com) and China (dashscope.aliyuncs.com) deployments. Your API key only works on the deployment it was issued on — if you get authentication errors, check that external_alibabacloud_base_url matches.

Available Models

Model	Modes	Aspect Ratios	Batch	Notes
Qwen Image 2.0 Pro	txt2img	1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16	up to 4	Best quality, 2K output, excellent bilingual text.
Qwen Image 2.0	txt2img	1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16	up to 4	Faster / cheaper 2K sibling of 2.0 Pro.
Qwen Image Max	txt2img	1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16	up to 4	High quality at ~1.3K native size.
Qwen Image Edit Max	txt2img (with reference images)	1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16	up to 4	Reference-image-driven generation with industrial / geometric reasoning. Accepts up to 14 reference images.
Wan 2.6 Text-to-Image	txt2img	1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16	up to 4	Photorealistic T2I at 1K.

All models support seed. Negative prompts are not currently plumbed through to DashScope, so the negative prompt input is ignored for these providers. None of the Alibaba Cloud models support img2img (denoising-strength edits) or inpaint (mask-based edits) in Invoke today.

Tips

1. Bilingual prompts. Qwen Image is unusually good at rendering Chinese text and mixed-language prompts — it’s a strong choice when your prompt or desired output contains non-Latin script.
2. Reference-image input is only accepted by Qwen Image Edit Max — provide images via the reference-images panel. Masks and denoising strength are not supported for any Alibaba Cloud model.
3. Batching is capped at 4 images per request. Larger batches are split across multiple API calls.
4. Costs vary per model — Qwen Image 2.0 Pro is the most expensive, Qwen Image 2.0 the cheapest of the 2.0 family. Check Alibaba Cloud’s pricing page before running large batches.