What is Ernie?
Ernie (ERNIE, also known in China as Wenxin Yiyan) is Baidu's family of large language models and the consumer assistant built on them. It is one of China's earliest and most widely used assistants, strong in Chinese-language understanding and multimodal tasks.
You reach Ernie through Baidu's assistant app, through the Qianfan developer platform and API, and, with the open-weight ERNIE 4.5 release, by self-hosting published weights. It integrates with Baidu's search and wider ecosystem.
Ernie is most relevant for Chinese-language and China-market work. For sensitive or regulated data outside China, weigh the governance implications of a China-based service or prefer the open weights you can host yourself.
What it's best for
- Chinese-language tasks: writing, comprehension, and search-grounded answers where native Chinese quality matters.
- China-market products that integrate with Baidu's search and ecosystem.
- Multimodal use, including image understanding and generation within Baidu's tools.
- Self-hosting the open-weight ERNIE 4.5 models for data control.
- Developers building on the Qianfan platform alongside other models it hosts.
Where it falls short
- Sensitive or regulated non-Chinese data on the hosted service, which runs on China-based infrastructure. Self-hosting the open weights avoids this.
- Topics subject to Chinese content restrictions, which the hosted assistant may avoid or steer.
- Teams wanting English-first consumer polish and Western enterprise support.
Ways in
Use Baidu's assistant app and website for the consumer experience. For building, the Qianfan platform exposes the ERNIE models by API along with deployment and tuning tools.
With the open-weight ERNIE 4.5 release, you can also download and run the models in your own environment.
Getting better answers
Prompt in Chinese for the strongest results; that is where the family is most competitive. Enable search grounding when you need current information from the Chinese web.
For data-sensitive work, evaluate the open weights rather than the hosted assistant, and confirm the license terms for your use.
What Ernie costs
Approximate, in USD, as of January 2026. Prices change often. Confirm on the official site before you rely on them.
Assistant app
$0
Free consumer assistant from Baidu, subject to limits.
Open weights (ERNIE 4.5)
$0 (self-host)
Download and run the published weights; you pay only your own compute.
Qianfan API
Usage-based
Priced per token by model on Baidu's developer platform.
Example prompts
Copy these into Ernie as starting points, then adapt them to your task.
Draft a clear, professional announcement in Chinese based on these bullet points. Keep it concise and adjust the tone for a general business audience.
Summarize this Chinese article in English in one paragraph, then list the three most important points. Note anything that may be culturally specific.
Answer this question using current information, and list the sources you relied on so I can verify them.
We are evaluating Ernie for a product that handles customer data. List the data-residency and governance questions to resolve before using the hosted service, and how self-hosting the open weights changes them.
Ernie
common questions.
Direct answers to the questions we get asked the most. If yours isn't covered, write to the team.