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

Apodex-1.1-mini vs Kimi K3

Kimi K3 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Apodex-1.1-mini's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Apodex-1.1-mini leads on reach and agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Apodex-1.1-mini C

Best for Long-running agent tasks with tools on a 32 GB GPU or Mac, or through Apodex's API, under a plain licence

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 against 65

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

No safety results, and agent guidance only from the harness

Kimi K3 B

Best for Teams with a multi-node GPU cluster who want an open 1M-context agent model for long coding and research work

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

1,561 GB of files at its smallest publisher build, far beyond any single machine

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApodex-1.1-miniKimi K3Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258550Apodex-1.1-mini +35
Risk20%206565even
Agent interface10%108565Apodex-1.1-mini +20
Documentation and upkeep10%103841Kimi K3 +3
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100B 62.4/100

Facts side by side

FactApodex-1.1-miniKimi K3
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorApodex AIMoonshot AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Kimi K3 License (modified MIT)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-252026-09-02
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews3.3/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Apodex-1.1-mini

An agent cousin fine-tuned from Qwen3.5-35B-A3B for long tasks with files, code and tools, with parallel tool calling and about 3B active parameters. It needs 32 GB for Apodex's GGUF, NVFP4 or GPTQ-Int4 builds or about 86 GB in BF16, and Apodex's API serves it too. The main risks are no safety results and no replies from the publisher.

Kimi K3

Kimi K3 is a 2.8T multimodal agent model with a 1M-token context, parallel tool calls and per-request effort, for long coding and research sessions. Its 1,561 GB of files need a multi-node GPU cluster, so most agents will call a hosted copy. The main risks are Moonshot's Python running at load and prompt time, and no answers in its repository.

Before you call either

Apodex-1.1-mini

  1. Serve it with vllm serve apodex/Apodex-1.1-mini --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser qwen3, or the same parsers in SGLang, so tool calls and reasoning come back parsed
  2. For llama.cpp, llama-server -hf apodex/Apodex-1.1-mini-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja --reasoning-format deepseek, and the card passes the repository's chat_template.jinja with --chat-template-file
  3. Pass tools through the API's tools parameter rather than in the system prompt, as the card asks
  4. The card recommends temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, repetition_penalty 1.05 and max_tokens up to 32,768
  5. Send your own system prompt, or set identity_mode, since the template otherwise adds an Apodex identity block
  6. The template keeps all earlier reasoning in the context unless preserve_thinking is false, which grows long agent sessions
  7. Thinking is on by default, send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  8. The card's Python example has a broken line where it runs the tool (available_toolsname), so fix it to available_tools[name](**args) before running
  9. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Kimi K3

  1. Start it with SGLang on a node of 8 B300s, sglang serve --trust-remote-code --model-path moonshotai/Kimi-K3 --tp-size 8 --context-length 65536 --mem-fraction-static 0.82 --reasoning-parser kimi_k3 --tool-call-parser kimi_k3 --port 30000
  2. Use the kimi_k3 tool-call and reasoning parsers in vLLM or SGLang, and validate tool-call arguments against the schema, since vLLM's recipe says K3 sometimes emits a format its parser doesn't expect
  3. Pass the whole assistant message back every turn, reasoning_content and tool_calls included, or output becomes unstable
  4. Thinking is always on; set reasoning_effort to low or high when max is too slow
  5. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, with top-p 0.95 for single-step tasks and 1.0 for agentic ones
  6. Don't hand an ongoing session from another model to K3, and state boundaries in the system prompt, since Moonshot warns it can act on its own when intent is unclear
  7. Without the hardware, call it through Moonshot's API or an inference provider listed on its Hugging Face page

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Apodex-1.1-mini or Kimi K3?

Kimi K3 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Apodex-1.1-mini's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Apodex-1.1-mini leads on reach and agent interface.

Other comparisons with Apodex-1.1-mini or Kimi K3

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