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

Apodex-1.1-mini vs Qwen3.5-0.8B

Apodex-1.1-mini scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3.5-0.8B's 46.7 (D), and leads in every scored category. 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 80
  • Risk, 65 against 55
  • Agent interface, 85 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 2.8 out of 5

Watch for

No safety results, and agent guidance only from the harness

Qwen3.5-0.8B D

Best for Builders who want a near-free local helper or fine-tuning base for narrow tasks on a phone-class device, laptop or CPU

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

Watch for

No quantised build from Alibaba and no inference provider found

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApodex-1.1-miniQwen3.5-0.8BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258580Apodex-1.1-mini +5
Risk20%206555Apodex-1.1-mini +10
Agent interface10%108560Apodex-1.1-mini +25
Documentation and upkeep10%103837Apodex-1.1-mini +1
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100D 46.7/100

Facts side by side

FactApodex-1.1-miniQwen3.5-0.8B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorApodex AIAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-252026-03-02
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)2.8/5 (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.

Qwen3.5-0.8B

A tiny vision-language cousin for prototypes, fine-tuning and light local steps such as routing, tagging or reading an image, running in under 2 GB in every major runtime under plain Apache 2.0. Keep thinking off, since the card warns it loops. The main risk is neglect, with no hosted option, safety results or answers from Alibaba since March.

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

Qwen3.5-0.8B

  1. Smallest start is ollama run qwen3.5:0.8b, or qwen3.5:0.8b-q8_0 at 1.0 GB
  2. Full precision vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.5-0.8B --port 8000 --max-model-len 262144 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. Thinking is off by default; if you turn it on with "chat_template_kwargs": {"enable_thinking": true}, stream and cut off runaway output, since the card warns of thinking loops, and add --reasoning-parser qwen3 in vLLM or SGLang to split the reasoning out
  4. There's no generation_config.json, so pass the card's sampling yourself, for example temperature=1.0, top_p=1.0, top_k=20, presence_penalty=2.0 for text without thinking
  5. Use it for narrow steps or as a fine-tuning base, not as the main agent, as the card itself suggests
  6. Validate any JSON it returns, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Apodex-1.1-mini or Qwen3.5-0.8B?

Apodex-1.1-mini scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3.5-0.8B's 46.7 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Apodex-1.1-mini or Qwen3.5-0.8B

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