Introduction: No Hardware? No Problem.

Want to explore Qwen3’s powerful coding abilities but don’t have a high-end GPU?

Use Google Colab to:

• Run Qwen3-Coder (7B/14B models)

• Access a GPU for free

• Try agentic coding workflows

• No installation required on your machine

This guide walks you through setting up Qwen3-Coder in Colab using Transformers + Hugging Face.

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1. Open Google Colab

Go to https://colab.research.google.com
Click "New Notebook", then follow these steps.

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2. Enable Free GPU Runtime

In the menu:
Runtime → Change runtime type → Set GPU
(Usually a Tesla T4 or L4 on free tier)

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3. Install Required Libraries

Run this in a code cell:

python
!pip install transformers accelerate bitsandbytes -q

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4. Load Qwen3-Coder Model

You can choose:

• Qwen/Qwen1.5-7B-Chat

• Qwen/Qwen1.5-14B-Chat

• Or any base/instruct variant

python
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM

model_id = "Qwen/Qwen1.5-7B-Chat"

tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id, trust_remote_code=True)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
    model_id,
    device_map="auto",
    trust_remote_code=True,
    load_in_4bit=True
)

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5. Run a Coding Prompt

python
prompt = (
    "<|im_start|>system\nYou are a helpful Python coding assistant.<|im_end|>\n"
    "<|im_start|>user\nWrite a Python script that sorts a list of numbers using bubble sort.<|im_end|>\n"
    "<|im_start|>assistant\n"
)

inputs = tokenizer(prompt, return_tensors="pt").to("cuda")
outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=300)
print(tokenizer.decode(outputs[0]))

✅ You’ll get clean, agentic code output—similar to ChatGPT Code Interpreter.

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6. Optional: Add Tool Use or Function Calling

Qwen3 models support:

• JSON output (with correct prompt formatting)

• Shell/REPL-style code generations

• Function-call-like formatting

python
prompt = (
    "<|im_start|>system\nOnly respond in JSON. No extra text.<|im_end|>\n"
    "<|im_start|>user\nReturn current datetime in Python code format.<|im_end|>\n"
    "<|im_start|>assistant\n"
)

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7. Notes on Colab Limitations

Want more power? Upgrade to Colab Pro or use HF Spaces with a GPU.

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Conclusion: Qwen3-Coder Anywhere, Anytime

Even with just a browser:

• Run powerful LLM coding models

• Explore agentic instructions

• Use free GPU from Colab

Qwen3-Coder makes high-quality code generation open, fast, and cost-free.

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Resources

• Qwen Models on Hugging Face

• Google Colab

• Transformers 4.40+ Docs

• Qwen-Coder Benchmarks