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

Apertus v1.5 8B vs Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

Apertus v1.5 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B's 52.1 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-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 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
  • Agent interface, 85 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 84 against 41

Watch for

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

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B D

Best for Agent builders who want to train or test an agent against simulated tools, terminals, browsers and phones on a 128 GB machine

Ahead on

  • Reach, 55 against 40

Watch for

Not a general assistant, and the card doesn't describe using it to call tools

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.

Documentation and upkeep Apertus v1.5 8B +43

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.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 41

Model card 11, the card gives intended use (simulating agent environments), architecture, parameters and context length. Training data 5, A general description without a cut-off, the three training stages and a statement that no outputs from external API services were included. Last change 10, the last commit was on 25 June 2026, an update to the card, 138 days before this check, past 90 days and within 180. Responsiveness 0, 10 discussions that aren't pull requests, opened between 24 June and 5 July 2026. Version policy 5, A first release, with nothing replaced. File health 10, Config, both copies of the template and the card agree on the architecture and the context. 11 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 41.

Agent interface Apertus v1.5 8B +35

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.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 50

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, the same as the template in tokenizer_config.json. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says how tools are declared and how calls come back. Trained tool calling 10, the template renders several tool_call blocks in one turn, but the card presents the model as a simulator of what tools and environments return, not as a tool caller. Structured output 0, no JSON or JSON Schema output documented for the model. Reasoning control 0, the card says thinking is on by default and names the qwen3 reasoning parser, but doesn't say how to turn thinking off or budget it. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native per the card and the text config. 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 50.

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.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 55

File safety 25, 21 safetensors shards and no pickle or Python files, and config.json has no auto_map. Provenance 15, files sit in the Qwen organisation, the one Alibaba's Qwen repositories on GitHub link to per the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B listing (10), and the Hub gives a SHA-256 for every large file (5). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, no prompt-injection guidance, instruction hierarchy, refusal statement or general cautions on the card. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, no threshold and no terms the licensor can change or revoke, and the card's licence link points at the LICENSE file in the repository. Security programme 0, no reporting route on the card. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.

Reach Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B +15

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.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 55

Memory 10, Alibaba's only build is the BF16 safetensors, 69.32 GB, and 69.32 GB × 1.2 = 83.2 GB, above 64 GB and inside the reference machine's GPU share. Runtimes 20, Four released runtimes run the architecture, vLLM 0.33.0 (Qwen3_5MoeForConditionalGeneration), SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2 (qwen3_5_moe) and llama.cpp b12242 (its Qwen conversion code). Builds 0, Alibaba publishes the BF16 weights only. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, an OSI licence, in the metadata and as a LICENSE file, with no use policy or other terms added. Download 10, the repository isn't gated, so the files download with no account and no terms to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face lists no inference provider for the model (an empty provider mapping on 10 November 2026). 10 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 55.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApertus v1.5 8BQwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254055Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B +15
Risk20%207555Apertus v1.5 8B +20
Agent interface10%108550Apertus v1.5 8B +35
Documentation and upkeep10%108441Apertus v1.5 8B +43
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100D 52.1/100

Facts side by side

FactApertus v1.5 8BQwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorSwiss AI Initiative (EPFL and ETH Zurich)Alibaba (Qwen 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 release2026-10-142026-06-25
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.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

A specialist, not a chat model. It plays the environment an agent acts in, across seven domains, so you can train or test an agent without the real thing. Alibaba ships BF16 only, which fits a 128 GB machine, and hasn't answered a discussion on it or changed the files since June.

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

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

  1. Use it as the environment, not the agent. Give it the domain's system prompt from Alibaba's GitHub repository, the history and the agent's action, and it returns the predicted observation
  2. With vLLM pass --language-model-only, or startup fails on the missing vision weights
  3. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95 and top_k 20, and allow up to 32,768 output tokens, as the card recommends
  4. Keep at least 128K of context, since the simulation depends on the history
  5. Thinking is on by default and comes back through the qwen3 reasoning parser
  6. A simulated observation is a prediction. Check anything that matters against the real environment

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Apertus v1.5 8B or Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B?

Apertus v1.5 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B's 52.1 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Apertus v1.5 8B or Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.