Ernie, explained

Baidu's Ernie: Free, English-Reachable, Barely Covered.

ERNIE 5.1 shipped in May 2026, individual access has been free since March 2025, and Baidu even open-sourced its 4.5 family under Apache 2.0 — a story Western coverage mostly skipped. Here's the honest state of it, numbers included, plus the Telegram way to try this model generation.

ERNIE 5.1 · free for individuals · open-sourced 4.5 family.Honest scope: ERNIE is not in our lineup
Try comparable frontier models
ERNIE 5.1 (May 2026)Free for individuals since 2025This model generation — in Telegram

See the difference

Current models, honest numbers, real access — the explainer.

What Ernie is in 2026

The current state

Baidu's flagship assistant, running ERNIE 5.1 (released early May 2026) on the 5.0 foundation — a 2.4-trillion-parameter full-modality model from January 2026. Free for individual users since March 2025; enterprises pay per token via Baidu's Qianfan cloud.

The genuinely notable part

Baidu open-sourced the entire ERNIE 4.5 family (MoE models up to 424B total parameters) in June 2025 under Apache 2.0 — one of the largest open-weights releases anywhere, and it got a fraction of a Llama launch's coverage.

The numbers, honestly

Headline vs tracker

Baidu reported 300 million cumulative users back in June 2024. Independent tracker data from January 2025 showed ~13M monthly actives — an order of magnitude below Doubao's. Both can be true: 'ever used' vs 'uses monthly'.

Access from outside China

The web version (ernie.baidu.com) is reachable internationally, Baidu promotes it in English, and third-party reviews note a Chinese phone number is no longer required to sign in. Still Chinese-first in interface and ecosystem — usable, with friction.

02·Practical use cases

Why Ernie is worth ten minutes

Open-weights followers

Tracking the largest open releases

Baidu open-sourced the entire ERNIE 4.5 family (up to 424B-parameter MoE) under Apache 2.0 in June 2025 — bigger news than its coverage suggested.

Access-curious readers

Actually trying a Chinese flagship

Ernie Bot is free for individuals, web-reachable internationally, and no longer demands a Chinese phone number — usable with friction.

Number skeptics

Reading chatbot marketing critically

300M cumulative users (June 2024) vs ~13M tracker MAU (Jan 2025): both true, different metrics. This page keeps them separate.

03·How it works

Ernie in three facts

01Current model

ERNIE 5.1 (early May 2026), built on the 2.4-trillion-parameter full-modality ERNIE 5.0 from January 2026 — per Baidu's own blog.

02Price

Free for individual users since March 16, 2025; enterprises pay per token via Baidu's Qianfan cloud.

03Access

Web version reachable internationally with English promotion; interface remains Chinese-first. Expect friction, not a wall.

04·Same tool · in Telegram

Telegram

This model generation, minus the friction

@vustbot · DeepSeek, GLM and Kimi answer in @vustbot next to GPT-5.5 and Claude — free tier, no new account.

Open in Telegram

05·Quality & trust

Honest scope

We don't run ERNIE

No ERNIE model is in @vustbot's lineup and this page never implies otherwise. The same-generation models we do run: DeepSeek, GLM 5.2, Kimi K2.6 — plus Western frontier.

Sources named

Model dates from Baidu's ERNIE blog and China Daily; free-access policy from Baidu's own announcement; user numbers from Reuters and tracker data — all dated in the copy.

Frequently asked questions

The under-reported-giants set.

Doubao (ByteDance)

The other under-reported giant — the sibling explainer.

GLM in Telegram

Zhipu's coding-strong model, usable today with a free tier.

All models

Every model @vustbot runs and how the free tier works.

Ready when you are

Ernie is a real story. Here's the usable version.

Try the same model generation in one Telegram chat — free tier first, no card, switch models mid-question.

Open @vustbotThe Doubao explainer