# baidu/ernie-4.5-21b-a3b-thinking

Calls to the model baidu/ernie-4.5-21b-a3b-thinking on Novita AI stopped working on May 22, 2026.

On May 22, 2026, the model baidu/ernie-4.5-21b-a3b-thinking was retired on Novita AI. Calls targeting model baidu/ernie-4.5-21b-a3b-thinking fail since that date. Novita AI marked it as a deprecated model and stopped serving requests sent to it.

## What to use instead

Switch to recommended alternatives qwen/qwen3.5-35b-a3b or qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b.

- API: Novita AI (api.novita.ai)
- Model: baidu/ernie-4.5-21b-a3b-thinking
- Released: March 16, 2025 (models.dev)
- Kind: Model retirement
- Takes effect: May 22, 2026
- Calls after that day: fail
- Calls it hits: `model baidu/ernie-4.5-21b-a3b-thinking`
- Source: [Model notices](https://novita.ai/docs/llms-full.txt#deprecation-notice)
- Verified: November 6, 2026, against Novita AI's own pages
- Page: https://www.okapi.bot/models/novita-ai/baidu/ernie-4.5-21b-a3b-thinking/

## Novita AI's words

> Deprecated model: baidu/ernie-4.5-21B-a3b-thinking; Recommended alternatives: qwen/qwen3.5-35b-a3b, qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b

Okapi finds the calls this change hits in your repo and opens the pull request with the fix: https://github.com/apps/okapi-agent