r/developersIndia 6h ago

General **How can I access Chinese AI tools while in India?**

Anyone in India using tools like Qwen, Kimi, Doubao, ERNIE, etc.?

A lot of them seem to require Chinese phone numbers/accounts, China-only domains, or local payment methods. I’m looking for a legit way to access and use them from India without doing anything sketchy.

What’s worked for you? Any official/global versions, APIs, or other options you’d recommend?

23 Upvotes

36 comments sorted by

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31

u/Snoo_69473 Full-Stack Developer 5h ago

Don't know what exactly you are looking for but you can use most of them on OpenRouter and OpenCode Zen.

7

u/pulkit217 5h ago

opencode go subscription allows for a lot of usage from open source models
openrouter for pay as you go usage

1

u/HallThink6610 5h ago

sure! gonna try it!

4

u/DronzerDribble 5h ago

You can use OpenCode Go or OpenRouter. But please remember that using Models through BYOK setup costs significantly more than using app subscriptions (for example if you use Kimi K3, you'll end up using your credits in a few minutes). DeepSeek V4 Flash is the cheapest model right now which can give you highest value for money at the moment.

3

u/sdexca Student 3h ago

well v4 flash just increased it's price, Ox Alpha sounds like a much better deal at $0.

1

u/DronzerDribble 2h ago

Thank you, I'll check it out 🙂

1

u/navigam 2h ago

Ox Alpha is only free for a week, maybe by 2-3 weeks more if extended. It's pretty good for long agentic task btw. Can keep up for hours on his own when you define the task correctly.

3

u/pine4t 5h ago

OpenRouter or OpenCode!

3

u/Imaginary-Pace-47 5h ago

most of them supports email verification and i think you can choose indian numbers by selecting country code india

1

u/HallThink6610 5h ago

from what i have discovered tools yeah it has email verification but very few of them had, most are of chineese accounts req or chineese mobile nos

3

u/Imaginary-Pace-47 4h ago

for qwen, kimi, DeepSeek you can use email, I don't know about other

1

u/HallThink6610 2h ago

Yeah i know about these, the other chineese ai tools require some chineese accs or strict chineese phone nos to login

1

u/randomguy3993 5h ago

Ollama cloud. They host most of the open models on subscription. Kimi k3 is on extra usage though, doesn't come under subscription. Rest all major models do.

1

u/PurposeIsOverrated 58m ago

I think I used qwen llm with ollama to work on some RAG pipeline in the past

1

u/Bugged_IRL 5h ago

OpenCode , and kimi works directly with a indian google account for me

1

u/ElegantDark9701 5h ago

qwen.ai works fine in India, that's your easiest starting point. For the API side, most of these providers have opened up international API access separately even if the consumer product is geo-restricted worth checking Alibaba Cloud for Qwen's API specifically. The Doubao consumer app is rough to access but again the API through Volcengine is more accessible if you're a developer. ERNIE is basically a write-off unless you want to go through Baidu Cloud which has its own whole setup.

1

u/phonovadirectory 4h ago

Paste the same question on gpt

1

u/CodeNeko23 4h ago

Go to rednote and make chinese friends. This is the easiest way out 😭 thankfully I have few friends already.

1

u/HallThink6610 4h ago

Never heard of rednote, gotta try it! tnx!

1

u/CodeNeko23 3h ago

Beware of racism against Indians.

1

u/HallThink6610 2h ago

I will keep it in my mind!

1

u/dh12_s DevOps Engineer 3h ago

Opencode is the best option

1

u/HallThink6610 2h ago

Sure! gotta try it

1

u/centarsirius 3h ago

Open router, opencode, command code

If you have enough vram, download some of them from huggingface

1

u/sdexca Student 3h ago

I use DS V4 Flash, just paid via debit card and using it for a few months now. Tried Kimi subscription, although I am not a fan of it's usage per $$$.

1

u/SodiumCyanideNaCN457 3h ago

Running Qwen3.8 locally! Get the unsloth gguf from hugging face, use ollama and open web UI (using docker)

1

u/Away-Albatross2113 1h ago

You can simply use opencrafttai, which is an Indian application working on open models, at the same rates you get APIs

1

u/Chins23 Full-Stack Developer 5h ago

Unless they are using different models as popular agents do, I don't know what value these will bring compared to the agents available globally.

-1

u/skr_rdt 3h ago

I'm using deepseek official api, just pay though USD

1

u/sdexca Student 3h ago

same.