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

Apodex-1.1-mini vs Ornith-1.5-122B

Apodex-1.1-mini and Ornith-1.5-122B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). 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

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 75
  • Risk, 65 against 50

Watch for

No safety results, and agent guidance only from the harness

Ornith-1.5-122B C

Best for Local coding and terminal agents on a 128 GB unified-memory machine or a 96 GB GPU setup, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required

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

Watch for

No LICENSE file though the card links one, and no notice for the Apache 2.0 Qwen3.5 and Gemma 4 work it builds on

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.

Risk Apodex-1.1-mini +15

Apodex-1.1-mini 65

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and nothing from the repositories runs. Provenance 15, the files are in the apodex organisation its site links to, with a SHA-256 for every weight file and a SHA256SUMS file for the GGUF. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 5, the recommended harness documents approval gates and a sandbox boundary, but nothing on prompt injection or refusals for the model. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 from Qwen3.5-35B-A3B through to this model with no conditions added. Security programme 5, the harness has a disclosure policy with a private address, with no route shown for the weights.

Ornith-1.5-122B 50

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and no Python in any of Ornith's repositories for this size, so the card's --trust-remote-code flag loads nothing from the repository. Provenance 15, the files come from the ornith-ai organisation Ornith's blog links to, with a SHA-256 for every weight file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either. Licence risk 10, MIT carries no policy, threshold or changeable terms, but the card's licence link is broken. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact.

Reach Apodex-1.1-mini +10

Apodex-1.1-mini 85

Memory 20, Apodex's Q4_K_M GGUF with its vision projector is 22.6 GB and needs about 27.1 GB with the fifth added, so 32 GB, as do its NVFP4 and GPTQ-Int4 builds. Runtimes 20, the Qwen3.5 MoE architecture runs in released vLLM, SGLang, Transformers and llama.cpp, while Ollama's and LM Studio's entries are the base's, not this model's. Builds 15, Apodex publishes FP8, NVFP4, GPTQ-Int4 and GGUF. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 5, Apodex's own API serves it.

Ornith-1.5-122B 75

Memory 10, since Ornith's own MLX 4-bit build is 69.7 GB and needs about 83.6 GB with the fifth added, over 64 GB and inside the reference machine's 107.4 GB, as do its Q4_K_M GGUF, its NVFP4 build and Ollama's build. Runtimes 25, the most the line gives, from vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2, llama.cpp's qwen35moe architecture, Ollama's library and LM Studio's catalogue for the qwen35moe architecture. Builds 15, Ornith publishes FP8, NVFP4, GGUF and MLX at several precisions. Terms 15, MIT as named in the card's metadata, with nothing added, read by its terms though the repository has no licence file. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, Ornith runs no API and no inference provider serves it. 10 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 75.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApodex-1.1-miniOrnith-1.5-122BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258575Apodex-1.1-mini +10
Risk20%206550Apodex-1.1-mini +15
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%103836Apodex-1.1-mini +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactApodex-1.1-miniOrnith-1.5-122B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorApodex AIOrnith
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-252026-10-24
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews3.3/5 (4)none

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.

Ornith-1.5-122B

The largest Ornith that fits a 128 GB machine, a coding and terminal-agent cousin on Qwen3.5-122B-A10B's architecture with XML tool calls and 262,144 tokens of context. Its 4-bit builds need 84 to 93 GB. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, safety results or replies, and a card that misstates the hardware.

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

Ornith-1.5-122B

  1. Start it with ollama run ornith-1.5:122b-q4_K_M, or llama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-122B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 262144
  2. Budget about 92 GB for the Q4_K_M GGUF with a working context, and less context if the machine has under 100 GB for the model
  3. In vLLM pass --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_xml --reasoning-parser qwen3, and in SGLang --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser qwen3, so tool calls and reasoning come back parsed
  4. Thinking is on by default. Send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  5. Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
  6. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 for coding and temperature 1.0 for general tasks, as the card recommends
  7. Add mmproj-Ornith-1.5-122B-BF16.gguf (0.9 GB) for image input in llama.cpp, and validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Apodex-1.1-mini or Ornith-1.5-122B?

Apodex-1.1-mini and Ornith-1.5-122B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C).

Other comparisons with Apodex-1.1-mini or Ornith-1.5-122B

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