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

Arete-27B vs Kronos

Kronos and Arete-27B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55.2 (C) and 55.1 (C). Arete-27B leads on risk. 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

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

Watch for

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

Kronos C

Best for Agents that need a quick local forecast or synthetic sample of a candlestick series on modest hardware, for research or as one input among others.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 55 against 50

Watch for

Runs only through the publisher's own PyTorch code from GitHub, in no named runtime and with no quantised build

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.

Reach Kronos +5

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.

Kronos 55

Memory 30, the publisher's Kronos-mini with its tokeniser is 0.03 GB and even Kronos-base is 0.43 GB in FP32. Runtimes 0, it runs only through the publisher's own PyTorch package from GitHub, and none of the six named runtimes supports it. Builds 0, FP32 safetensors only. Terms 15, MIT with nothing added. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, no inference provider or publisher API serves it (provider mapping still empty on 4 November).

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.

Kronos 50

File safety 15, safetensors only, but the only documented loading path is the publisher's Python package in place of a runtime. Provenance 15, the files are in the NeoQuasar account the publisher's README links, with SHA-256 hashes. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 5, the README's general cautions that the fine-tuning pipeline isn't a production trading system. Licence risk 15, plain MIT; the broken licence link is charged to file health. Security programme 0, no reporting route found.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runArete-27BKronosEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255055Kronos +5
Risk20%205550Arete-27B +5
Agent interface10%106060even
Documentation and upkeep10%106361Arete-27B +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.1/100C 55.2/100

Facts side by side

FactArete-27BKronos
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNous ResearchYu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua University
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-062026-04-13
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Popularitynone43k stars

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.

Kronos

Forecasts the next price bars from a history of up to 512 candlestick bars. Every size fits in under 0.5 GB and runs on a CPU, but only through the publisher's own Python package. Nobody has benchmarked it independently, its quickstart data was deleted from the repository, and the publisher hasn't replied since November 2025.

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

Kronos

  1. Clone https://github.com/shiyu-coder/Kronos and pip install -r requirements.txt, then load Kronos.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-small") and KronosTokenizer.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-Tokenizer-base") and wrap them in KronosPredictor
  2. Pair Kronos-mini with Kronos-Tokenizer-2k and Kronos-small or Kronos-base with Kronos-Tokenizer-base, the cards' pairing
  3. The examples read examples/data/XSHG_5min_600977.csv, which no longer exists; point them at tests/data/regression_input.csv, 2,500 five-minute bars
  4. Keep the lookback at or under max_context, 512 bars, and pass the future timestamps you want as y_timestamp, since the calendar fields come from them
  5. Raise sample_count for a steadier forecast, but expect only the mean back; call the lower-level auto_regressive_inference yourself if you need the paths
  6. Treat forecasts as model output to check, not signals; the README says its own backtest pipeline isn't a production trading system

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Arete-27B or Kronos?

Kronos and Arete-27B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55.2 (C) and 55.1 (C). Arete-27B leads on risk.

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