Debuly
ERNIE logo

ERNIE

Baidu's ERNIE model family, covering multimodal chat models, text-to-image and document parsing, with release notes on its blog.

Visit ernie.baidu.com ERNIE (official site)Compare chat assistants

What is ERNIE?

ERNIE is Baidu's family of large AI models, and the ernie.baidu.com site is where Baidu publishes releases and lets visitors chat with the newest version. The latest announced model, ERNIE 5.1, is a smaller model derived from ERNIE 5.0 and tuned with agentic post-training for agent tasks, reasoning and creative writing. ERNIE 5.0 is described as a 2.4 trillion-parameter model that handles text, images, video and audio in a single autoregressive framework. The family also includes ERNIE-Image, an 8B-parameter text-to-image model, PaddleOCR-VL-1.5 for parsing documents, and FastDeploy, a toolkit for running ERNIE models efficiently. Baidu links the ERNIE chat assistant, the Qianfan model platform, the AI Studio community and Hugging Face from the blog. Pricing and usage limits are not stated, so check the official site for current access terms.

Use cases

  • Chat with Baidu's latest ERNIE model
  • Generate images from text prompts
  • Parse documents with PaddleOCR-VL
  • Follow ERNIE model release notes
  • Deploy ERNIE models with FastDeploy
  • Test multimodal models for a project

Who it's for

  • AI researchers
  • Developers
  • Chinese-speaking users
  • Enterprise teams

Why use ERNIE

  • One site collects Baidu's ERNIE announcements, so you can follow each new model release in one place.
  • ERNIE 5.0 handles text, images, video and audio in one model rather than separate stitched components.
  • Open-weights releases such as ERNIE-Image give developers something they can run on their own hardware.
  • FastDeploy and PaddlePaddle tooling help teams that want to host ERNIE models themselves.

ERNIE features

  • ERNIE 5.1 model tuned for agent, reasoning and creative writing tasks
  • ERNIE 5.0 unified model for text, image, video and audio
  • Mixture-of-experts design that activates about 3% of parameters per token
  • ERNIE-Image text-to-image model with 8B DiT parameters
  • PaddleOCR-VL-1.5 vision-language model for document parsing
  • FastDeploy 2.0 toolkit for large-model inference
  • Context length extended from 8K to 128K during ERNIE 5.0 training
  • Blog covering releases and leaderboard results

ERNIE integrations

  • Hugging Face
  • PaddlePaddle
  • Qianfan

How to get started with ERNIE

  1. Open ernie.baidu.com to chat with the most recent ERNIE model.
  2. Read the blog to see which models are current and what each one is built for.
  3. Follow the links to Hugging Face or Baidu AI Studio to try or download models such as ERNIE-Image.
  4. For production use, check the Qianfan platform or FastDeploy for hosting and inference options.

ERNIE limitations

  • Pricing, plans and usage limits are not published; check the official site
  • Ranking claims come from Baidu's own announcements
  • Blog content is largely technical and written for researchers

ERNIE pricing

We couldn't confirm pricing on the official site. Check ernie.baidu.com for current prices.

Prices can change and may vary by country or exclude tax. Check the official pricing page.

ERNIE alternatives

The main ERNIE alternatives listed on Debuly are ChatGPT, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Claude, Kimi and ChatHub. The table compares pricing and platforms; order is A–Z.

ERNIE compared with its alternatives
ToolPricingStarting pricePlatforms
ERNIEPricing unknown—Web, Self-hosted
ChatGPTFreemium—Web, iOS, Android, macOS
ChatHubPaid$14.99/moWeb, iOS, Android, Chrome extension
ClaudeFreemium$17/moWeb, iOS, Android, Chrome extension
DeepSeekFreemium—Web, API
Google GeminiFreemium——
KimiPaidCN¥49/moWeb, CLI, VS Code, Desktop

  1. ChatGPT

    OpenAI's AI assistant for chat, writing, analysis, images, voice, deep research and coding across web, iOS and Android.

    Chat assistantsResearch and searchCodingWriting
    FreemiumVisit ChatGPT (official site)

  2. ChatHub

    Subscription app that puts GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek and 30+ other AI models in one place, with side-by-side chats.

    Chat assistantsProductivityResearch and search
    PaidVisit ChatHub (official site)

  3. Claude

    Anthropic's AI assistant for chat, writing, analysis, coding and research on web, desktop and mobile, with a free plan.

    Chat assistantsCodingWritingResearch and search
    FreemiumVisit Claude (official site)

  4. DeepSeek

    AI lab and chat assistant with a pay-per-token API for its V4 Flash and V4 Pro models, plus an app and web chat.

    Chat assistantsDeveloper platformsCoding
    FreemiumVisit DeepSeek (official site)

  5. Google Gemini

    Google's AI assistant for questions, writing, research and image or video creation, with links into Gmail, Docs and other Google apps.

    Chat assistantsResearch and searchImage generationProductivity
    FreemiumVisit Google Gemini (official site)

  6. Kimi

    AI assistant for chat, deep research, slides, agent tasks and coding with Kimi Code, sold as monthly membership plans with shared credits.

    Chat assistantsCodingResearch and search
    PaidVisit Kimi (official site)

ERNIE FAQ

What is ERNIE 5.0?

ERNIE 5.0 is a unified multimodal model with 2.4 trillion parameters. It was built from scratch to work with text, images, video and audio inside one autoregressive framework.

How much does ERNIE cost?

The vendor does not publish prices or plans. Check the official ERNIE site or Baidu's Qianfan platform for current access terms.

Is there a free plan for ERNIE?

A free plan cannot be confirmed because pricing is not stated. The site offers a chat experience; confirm its limits on the official site.

Can ERNIE generate images?

Yes. Baidu announced ERNIE-Image, a text-to-image model built on a single-stream Diffusion Transformer with 8B DiT parameters and open weights.

Is ERNIE open source?

Some ERNIE releases are open. The blog describes ERNIE 4.5 models being open-sourced and ERNIE-Image as open-weights, while ERNIE 5.x availability should be checked on the official site.

Does ERNIE have an API?

Baidu links its Qianfan large-model platform from the ERNIE blog, which is the route to hosted model access. Details are on the Qianfan site.

What are alternatives to ERNIE?

Comparable model families and assistants include ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Qwen, DeepSeek and Claude.

Sources & verification

Facts on this page come from the official sources below, each with the date we read it. Written by Debuly; the vendor did not review this page.

SourceTypeAccessed
ernie.baidu.com/official
ernie.baidu.com/blog/zh/about/official
ernie.baidu.com/blog/posts/ernie-5.1-0508-release/official
ernie.baidu.com/blog/official
ernie.baidu.com/blog/posts/ernie5.0/official
ernie.baidu.com/blog/posts/fastdeploy2.0/official

Image credits

  • Logo: from ernie.baidu.com · fetched · Vendor trademark, used only to identify the product; removed on request
  • Cover: none collected yet, so a generated tile is shown.

Spot an error? Report an issue with this listing. We also remove a logo or image on the owner's request.