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

Arete-27B vs EXAONE 4.5 33B

EXAONE 4.5 33B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Arete-27B's 55.1 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Arete-27B leads on risk and documentation and upkeep. 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

Arete-27B C

Best for Agents that want Qwen3.8-27B's coding and tool use without its handling of politically sensitive topics, on a 24 GB card or a 128 GB machine

Ahead on

  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 63 against 50

Watch for

No quantised build from Nous Research, so the GGUF route depends on a third party

EXAONE 4.5 33B C

Best for Researchers and students working on documents, Korean or multimodal agents who don't need commercial rights

Ahead on

  • Reach, 65 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 against 60

Watch for

Research and education only. No commercial use of the model or its output

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.

Agent interface EXAONE 4.5 33B +25

Arete-27B 60

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says it. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic work as an intended use. Structured output 0 and reasoning control 0, neither is documented on the card. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native. 20 + 10 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 60.

EXAONE 4.5 33B 85

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (5,930 characters). Tool-calling format 25, the card's vLLM command names the parser, hermes with auto tool choice, and its agentic example calls tools from MCP servers through the OpenAI-compatible API, so declaration and return follow that API. Trained tool calling 20, the card reports agentic tool use among its language results and shows an agent run with several tool servers, and the template renders every call in a turn. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking is on by default and the card says to set it false for the non-reasoning mode, with an example of each. Context 10, 262,144 tokens per the card's configuration table and config.json, and the card's serve commands run at that length. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

Reach EXAONE 4.5 33B +15

Arete-27B 50

Memory 10, the only build from Nous Research is the 54.7 GB BF16 release, which needs about 66 GB and fits the reference machine. Runtimes 15, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers run the base's architecture from those files, and llama.cpp isn't credited because Nous Research publishes no GGUF. Builds 0, no quantised build of its own. Terms 15, Apache 2.0. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, no provider. 10 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 50.

EXAONE 4.5 33B 65

Memory 20, the smallest build at 4 bits is LG's IQ4_XS GGUF, 18.03 GB with the 2.57 GB projector, and 20.60 GB × 1.2 = 24.7 GB, within 32 GB. Without the projector, for text only, it would fit 24 GB. Runtimes 15, Released vLLM 0.33.0 has exaone4_5.py, Transformers 5.22.2 has the exaone4_5 model, and llama.cpp b12242 has the architecture, with LG's own GGUF. Three at 5 each. Builds 15, LG publishes GGUF at five quantised precisions, an AWQ build and an FP8 build. Terms 5, Research and educational use only. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for all four repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and no click-through, though the licence says downloading is acceptance. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and the card names no API that serves it. 20 + 15 + 15 + 5 + 10 + 0 = 65.

Documentation and upkeep Arete-27B +13

Arete-27B 63

Model card 8, no limitations, context length, languages or cut-off. Training data 20, the training pairs and the evaluation set are published with their counts. Last change 20, a commit on 6 November 2026. Responsiveness 0, none of 13 discussions has a reply from Nous Research. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 10, the files agree. 8 + 20 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 63.

EXAONE 4.5 33B 50

Model card 20, Uses (the quickstart's question answering, document and agent examples), limitations, the architecture, the parameters, the context, the languages (in the metadata) and a knowledge cut-off of December 2024 are all on the card. Training data 5, A knowledge cut-off and one line on excluding personal, harmful and biased content, with no sources or sizes. Last change 10, the main repository last changed on 6 July 2026 (dependencies moved to official releases), 127 days before this check, and the FP8 repository on 9 August, 93 days. Responsiveness 0, none of the 5 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (13 April to 4 May 2026) has a reply from an LGAI-EXAONE member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, EXAONE 4.0 and 4.0.1 stay in their own repositories and 4.5 came out in new ones, with no dated note on the older cards that we read. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture and the 262,144 tokens, and a July commit moved the dependencies to released versions. 20 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 50.

Risk Arete-27B +5

Arete-27B 55

File safety 25, safetensors only and no remote code. Provenance 15, Nous Research's own organisation, linked from its blog, with a hash on every file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw found. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.

EXAONE 4.5 33B 50

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the LGAI-EXAONE organisation (LG AI Research on the Hub), which the card's GitHub repository shares a name with and the licence in the repository is LG's (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions: the limitation section lists inappropriate, biased, incorrect and outdated answers and tells users not to try to induce harmful output. Licence risk 5, 15 less 5 for field-of-use limits beyond the law (no commercial use, no building competing models) and 5 for terms the licensor can change or revoke (LG may amend the agreement at any time, and the licence is revocable). Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card beyond a support contact, and www.lgresearch.ai has no security.txt. 25 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 0 = 50.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runArete-27BEXAONE 4.5 33BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255065EXAONE 4.5 33B +15
Risk20%205550Arete-27B +5
Agent interface10%106085EXAONE 4.5 33B +25
Documentation and upkeep10%106350Arete-27B +13
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.1/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactArete-27BEXAONE 4.5 33B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNous ResearchLG AI Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0EXAONE AI Model License Agreement 1.2 - NC (research and education only)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-062026-07-06
Terms last updatedno document linkednot read yet
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked

Verdicts

Arete-27B

Qwen3.8-27B with its answers on politically sensitive topics retrained, four days old when read. The training data is published, which is rare. Nous Research ships BF16 only, so a small machine runs it from bartowski's GGUF, and the card documents none of the tool or thinking controls it inherits.

EXAONE 4.5 33B

A well-documented vision-language model with a full set of builds, tool calling, switchable reasoning, a 256K context and a stated knowledge cut-off. The licence decides whether you can use it: research and education only, output included, and LG can change the terms. Nothing answered on the repository and no safety results.

Before you call either

Arete-27B

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf bartowski/NousResearch_Arete-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, a third party's conversion, or serve the BF16 files with vLLM
  2. Use the base's parsers in vLLM, --reasoning-parser qwen3 --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, and check tool calls first, since the template differs slightly from Qwen3.8-27B's
  3. Thinking switches with enable_thinking in the template. The card's own evaluation ran with it off
  4. Expect answers on politically sensitive topics to differ from Qwen3.8-27B's. That is what the fine-tune is for
  5. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

EXAONE 4.5 33B

  1. Don't use it, or anything it writes, commercially. The licence covers the output too
  2. Serve it with vLLM and --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser hermes
  3. Set enable_thinking false for a direct answer. Thinking is on by default
  4. Use temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and presence_penalty 1.5 in general, and temperature 0.6 with top_k 20 for documents and Korean
  5. For llama.cpp, load a projector file from LG's GGUF repository with the weights for image input
  6. Its knowledge stops at December 2024

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Arete-27B or EXAONE 4.5 33B?

EXAONE 4.5 33B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Arete-27B's 55.1 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Arete-27B leads on risk and documentation and upkeep.

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