Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Apertus v1.5 8B vs Hy-Memory-30B-A3B

Apertus v1.5 8B and Hy-Memory-30B-A3B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Hy-Memory-30B-A3B leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 4969 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Apertus v1.5 8B C

Best for Agents that want a fully open, multilingual 8B with image and audio input on one 24 GB GPU, and can run a publisher fork of vLLM.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 75 against 60
  • Agent interface, 85 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 84 against 68

Watch for

No released runtime supports it, only Swiss AI's forks of vLLM and Transformers

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B C

Best for Agents with an external memory framework that want a local model for the write path on a 24 GB card

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 40

Watch for

Not a general assistant or a tool caller

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach Hy-Memory-30B-A3B +45

Apertus v1.5 8B 40

Memory 25 of 30, the BF16 files are 18.4 GB, or 22.1 GB with a fifth added, which fits 24 GB. Runtimes 0, no released vLLM (to 0.33.0), SGLang (to 0.5.23), Transformers (to 5.22.1), llama.cpp, Ollama or LM Studio runs version 1.5 yet, only Swiss AI's forks. Builds 0, Swiss AI publishes no quantised build. Terms 10 of 15, Apache 2.0 with an acceptable use policy added at the gate. Download 5, a click-through that needs an account and your contact details. Hosted 0, no inference provider or publisher API was found, and Swiss AI's documentation page names none on 3 November 2026.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B 85

Memory 25, Tencent's own Q4_K_M GGUF is 18.24 GB, and 18.24 GB × 1.2 = 21.9 GB, which fits 24 GB but not 16 GB. Its Q3_K_M file and the two files with experts at 1 or 2 bits are below 4-bit precision and don't count. Runtimes 20, hy_v3 model code in released vLLM (HYV3ForCausalLM in the v0.33.0 registry), SGLang v0.5.23 (hunyuan_v3.py), Transformers v5.22.2 and llama.cpp b12242, 5 each. Builds 15, Tencent publishes an FP8 repository and a GGUF repository with Q4_K_M, Q6_K and Q8_0 files in its own organisation, so quantised builds at two precisions or more. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, with only a preamble naming Tencent as copyright holder above the licence text. Download 10, gated is false for the main, FP8 and GGUF repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account or terms to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face lists no inference provider for the model (an empty provider mapping on 10 November 2026), and the card names no API. 25 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 85.

Agent interface Apertus v1.5 8B +20

Apertus v1.5 8B 85

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Swiss AI's report documents how tools are declared and returned and the card names vLLM's apertus parser. Trained tool calling 20, trained on verified tool use with several calls a turn, though parallel calls are weaker on the 8B and tools don't work with thinking on. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 10, thinking turns on per request and the card says where the reasoning comes back. Context 10, 262,144 tokens trained.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B 65

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the card doesn't mention tools. Trained tool calling 10, the template can render tool calls, but the card presents the model as a memory writer that returns memories as text or JSON and says nothing of calling tools. Structured output 5, the card's quickstart asks for a JSON object with a memories list in the system prompt and shows nothing else, no response_format and no schema, so JSON output is shown by example without a documented way to constrain it. Reasoning control 10, the card passes reasoning_effort as no_think per request through chat_template_kwargs, and the template takes high, low or no_think. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native (max_position_embeddings in config.json). 20 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 65.

Documentation and upkeep Apertus v1.5 8B +16

Apertus v1.5 8B 84

Model card 14 of 20, languages and a knowledge cut-off are missing. Training data 20, every dataset is public and listed with versions, licences and counts. Last change 20, the card changed on 14 October 2026, 20 days before 3 November, and Swiss AI added its own evaluation-results files on 26 October and 3 November. Responsiveness 20, Swiss AI answered all three questions, unchanged on 3 November 2026. Version policy 5, earlier models stay in their own repositories without a dated note. File health 5, the gated config couldn't be checked against the card, and the card and the policy disagree on the output filter.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B 68

Model card 8, Intended use (the write path of Mem0, MemOS and Hy-Memory), parameters (30B, about 3B active) and languages (English and Chinese, in the metadata) are there. Training data 5, A general description of the two training stages inside the harnesses, with no datasets, sizes or cut-off. Last change 20, the last commit, on 16 October 2026, added the licence and the card, 25 days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 4 discussions that aren't pull requests (16 to 30 October 2026), 3 have a reply from a tencent organisation member. Version policy 5, A first release, with nothing replaced. File health 10, Config, tokenizer and template agree on the architecture, the context and the thinking levels. 8 + 5 + 20 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 68.

Risk Apertus v1.5 8B +15

Apertus v1.5 8B 75

File safety 25, safetensors only and no code in the repository. Provenance 15, the files are in the swiss-ai organisation the report links, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10 of 20, published safety benchmarks run with Swiss AI's open harnesses and early access for three outside evaluators, but the manual evaluation is Swiss AI's own and can't be rerun. Agent guidance 10, the report says what the refusals cover, how far jailbreaks get and that capability limits are the main defence, with a personal-data filter to apply, but nothing on prompt injection for deployers. Licence risk 10, 5 off for the use policy. Security programme 5, ETH Zurich's disclosure policy, with no advisories found.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B 60

File safety 25, 51 safetensors shards and no pickle or Python files. Provenance 15, files in the tencent organisation that the card's own resource list links to (10), with a SHA-256 listed for all 53 large files (5). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, no prompt-injection guidance, instruction hierarchy, account of trained refusals or general cautions on the card. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with no use policy, no field-of-use limit, no threshold and no clause letting Tencent change the terms. Security programme 5, Tencent's Security Response Center takes vulnerability reports company-wide with published reward rules, as the Hy3 listing records (5). 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 60.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApertus v1.5 8BHy-Memory-30B-A3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254085Hy-Memory-30B-A3B +45
Risk20%207560Apertus v1.5 8B +15
Agent interface10%108565Apertus v1.5 8B +20
Documentation and upkeep10%108468Apertus v1.5 8B +16
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactApertus v1.5 8BHy-Memory-30B-A3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorSwiss AI Initiative (EPFL and ETH Zurich)Tencent (Hy team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0, with the Apertus Acceptable Use Policy (v1.5, 14 July 2026) accepted at the download gateApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-142026-10-16
Terms last updatednot read yetno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Apertus v1.5 8B

A fully open 8B cousin, training data included, for multilingual chat and tool calls with images and audio in. It needs about 22 GB in BF16 and Swiss AI's own vLLM or Transformers fork, since no released runtime supports it. The main risks are a gated download with a policy to pass on and tools that fail with thinking on.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B

A specialist that writes an agent's long-term memory, built to slot into Mem0, MemOS or Tencent's own framework in place of a general model. It fits a 24 GB card from Tencent's own GGUF, under plain Apache 2.0, and Tencent answers on the repository. Its results are Tencent's own and nobody has rerun them.

Before you call either

Apertus v1.5 8B

  1. Accept the terms on the card and set HF_TOKEN before downloading
  2. Use Swiss AI's Docker image ghcr.io/swiss-ai/vllm_apertus_1.5_release, since stock vLLM and Transformers don't load Apertus1p5ForConditionalGeneration yet
  3. Serve with --chat-template-content-format string --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser apertus for tools, and leave thinking off when you need tools
  4. For thinking, set --reasoning-parser apertus and --default-chat-template-kwargs.enable_thinking true, and budget max tokens generously
  5. Audio is resampled to 24 kHz and costs 40 tokens a second, and video must be passed as frames
  6. Don't cast the loaded model with .half(), the image and audio tokenizers must stay in F32
  7. If you redistribute the weights, the policy says you must pass it on and get the recipient's express assent

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B

  1. Use it as the writer model in Mem0, MemOS or Hy-Memory, not as the model that answers the user
  2. Start it with llama-server -hf tencent/Hy-Memory-30B-A3B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, or with vLLM under the served name hy-memory as the card does
  3. Pass reasoning_effort as no_think in chat_template_kwargs and temperature 0, as the card's example does
  4. Ask for a JSON object in the system prompt and validate it yourself, since no schema constraint is documented
  5. Treat what it stores as unverified. It keeps what a conversation says, true or not

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Apertus v1.5 8B or Hy-Memory-30B-A3B?

Apertus v1.5 8B and Hy-Memory-30B-A3B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Hy-Memory-30B-A3B leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Apertus v1.5 8B or Hy-Memory-30B-A3B

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