# Apertus v1.5 8B vs Ripple-65B Preview (slim)

> Apertus v1.5 8B scores 61 (C) to Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apertus-v1-5-8b-vs-ripple-65b-preview.md (~8,050 tokens) · this version ~1,680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apertus-v1-5-8b-vs-ripple-65b-preview.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/apertus-v1-5-8b-vs-ripple-65b-preview
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-04
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Apertus v1.5 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Ripple-65B Preview leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Apertus v1.5 8B: C 61, rank #40 of 121 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/apertus-v1-5-8b.min.md
- Ripple-65B Preview: D 53.3, rank #103 of 121 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ripple-65b-preview.min.md
- Apertus v1.5 8B, good 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 75; Documentation and upkeep, 84 against 49.
- Ripple-65B Preview, good for Teams with Blackwell GPUs or a DGX Spark who want an Apache 2.0 coding model to try for terminal and agentic coding work, and can run the publisher's code to serve it. Ahead on Reach, 45 against 40.

| Category | Apertus v1.5 8B | Ripple-65B Preview |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 40 | 45 |
| Risk (20%) | 75 | 55 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 75 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 84 | 49 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Apertus v1.5 8B | Ripple-65B Preview |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Swiss AI Initiative (EPFL and ETH Zurich) | Ricursive Intelligence |
| Licence | Apache-2.0, with the Apertus Acceptable Use Policy (v1.5, 14 July 2026) accepted at the download gate | Apache-2.0 |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-11-04 |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Documentation and upkeep, Apertus v1.5 8B +35: 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.); Ripple-65B Preview 49 (Model card 14 of 20, no limitations and no knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a general description with token counts and no cut-off. Last change 20, released today. Responsiveness 0, no discussions yet, read as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release, with the NVFP4 checkpoint replaced in place on release day under a commit note. File health 5, tokenizer_config.json carries a second, tool-less chat template and a 131,072-token limit against the card's 1M.)
- 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.); Ripple-65B Preview 55 (File safety 15, safetensors only, less 10 because the documented way to run it loads Ricursive's Python. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation ricursive.com links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Ricursive's own FORTRESS and StrongREJECT results. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw.)
- Agent interface, Apertus v1.5 8B +10: 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.); Ripple-65B Preview 75 (Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Ricursive's server README says how tools are declared and calls come back, with the ripple parser in SGLang 0.5.19. Trained tool calling 20, one or more calls a turn and agentic-coding RL. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the template has no thinking switch or effort levels. Context 10, long-context training at 2M-token sequences for a stated 1M.)
- Reach, Ripple-65B Preview +5: 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.); Ripple-65B Preview 45 (Memory 10 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Ricursive's NVFP4 at 57.2 GB, 68.7 GB with a fifth added, which is over 64 GB and fits our reference machine. Runtimes 0, no released runtime runs the ricursive architecture with its own code; Ricursive's SGLang plugin and Transformers' remote code don't count. Builds 10, one quantised precision (NVFP4) from Ricursive. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, Ricursive serves no API, Hugging Face maps no provider, Together AI's page says coming soon, and GMI Cloud's and OpenRouter's pages weren't read.)