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

Apertus v1.5 8B vs Nanbeige4.2-3B

Apertus v1.5 8B and Nanbeige4.2-3B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Nanbeige4.2-3B leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 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 55
  • Documentation and upkeep, 84 against 72

Watch for

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

Nanbeige4.2-3B C

Best for Local agents that need tool calling and a long context on a laptop or a small GPU

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 40

Watch for

Its own architecture: Transformers loads it only with the repository's code

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 Nanbeige4.2-3B +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.

Nanbeige4.2-3B 85

Memory 30, the smallest build from Nanbeige is the FP8 repository (the 8-bit GPTQ one is the same size), 5.19 GB, and 5.19 GB × 1.2 = 6.2 GB, within 16 GB. bartowski's GGUF isn't read for this line. Runtimes 15, Released SGLang 0.5.23 has the model (srt/models/nanbeige.py) with its parsers, llama.cpp b12242 has the nanbeige architecture, and vLLM 0.33.0 names NanbeigeForCausalLM in its registry, served through its Transformers backend. Builds 15, Quantised builds from Nanbeige at two precisions, FP8 and 8-bit GPTQ, each in its own repository. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata, an OSI licence, with no use policy or other terms on the card. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the model and its FP8 and 8-bit repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and no Nanbeige or BOSS Zhipin API for it was found. 30 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 85.

Risk Apertus v1.5 8B +20

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.

Nanbeige4.2-3B 55

File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, the files sit in the Nanbeige organisation (Nanbeige LLM Lab), which the lab's arXiv report for this model links, so the publisher's own account, although the Hub hasn't verified it (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions: the limitations section says outputs may be inaccurate, biased or harmful. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, no threshold and no clause letting the licensor change or revoke it. Security programme 5, BOSS Zhipin runs a security response centre for reporting flaws in its products, as read for the Nanbeige4.3-33B listing (5), though nothing links it to the model. 15 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 55.

Documentation and upkeep Apertus v1.5 8B +12

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.

Nanbeige4.2-3B 72

Model card 17, Intended use, limitations, the architecture, the parameters (3B outside the embeddings), the context and the languages (in the metadata) are on the card. Training data 5, A general description of how the fine-tuning and reinforcement learning data was built and filtered, with no sources, sizes or cut-off. Last change 15, the last commit, on 11 September 2026, updated modeling_nanbeige.py, 60 days before this check and within 90. Responsiveness 20, Of the 34 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (21 July to 10 September 2026), 20 have a reply from a Nanbeige member, which is most. Version policy 5, Nanbeige's earlier models (Nanbeige4-3B, 4.1-3B) stay in their own repositories, as the Base, FP8, 8-bit and DSpark builds of this one do. File health 10, Config, tokenizer config, template and card agree on the architecture and the 262,144 tokens. 17 + 5 + 15 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 72.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApertus v1.5 8BNanbeige4.2-3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254085Nanbeige4.2-3B +45
Risk20%207555Apertus v1.5 8B +20
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%108472Apertus v1.5 8B +12
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactApertus v1.5 8BNanbeige4.2-3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorSwiss AI Initiative (EPFL and ETH Zurich)Nanbeige LLM Lab (BOSS Zhipin)
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 (Hub metadata only; the repository has no LICENSE file)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-142026-09-11
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.

Nanbeige4.2-3B

A small model built for agent work, with tool calling it was trained for, a thinking switch and a 256K context in about 5 GB, under Apache 2.0, from a lab that answers most questions. Its architecture is its own, so check your runtime: SGLang and llama.cpp have it, Transformers needs the repository's code, and Nanbeige ships no GGUF.

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

Nanbeige4.2-3B

  1. Serve it with SGLang 0.5.23 or later and pass --tool-call-parser nanbeige --reasoning-parser nanbeige
  2. Pass tools in the request. The card recommends tool_call_format="xml"
  3. Set preserve_thinking true for multi-turn tool use and coding, false for plain chat
  4. Use temperature 1.0 for agent and tool work and 0.6 for reasoning and chat, per the card
  5. For llama.cpp use b12242 or later. The GGUF files on the Hub are bartowski's, not Nanbeige's
  6. If you load it with Transformers, read modeling_nanbeige.py first: trust_remote_code runs it

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Apertus v1.5 8B or Nanbeige4.2-3B?

Apertus v1.5 8B and Nanbeige4.2-3B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Nanbeige4.2-3B leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Apertus v1.5 8B or Nanbeige4.2-3B

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