Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Arete-27B vs Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
Arete-27B scores 55.1 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B's 52.1 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B leads on reach. 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
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
- Agent interface, 60 against 50
- Documentation and upkeep, 63 against 41
Watch for
No quantised build from Nous Research, so the GGUF route depends on a third party
Best for Agent builders who want to train or test an agent against simulated tools, terminals, browsers and phones on a 128 GB machine
Ahead on
- Reach, 55 against 50
Watch for
Not a general assistant, and the card doesn't describe using it to call tools
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.
Documentation and upkeep Arete-27B +22
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.
Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 41
Model card 11, the card gives intended use (simulating agent environments), architecture, parameters and context length. Training data 5, A general description without a cut-off, the three training stages and a statement that no outputs from external API services were included. Last change 10, the last commit was on 25 June 2026, an update to the card, 138 days before this check, past 90 days and within 180. Responsiveness 0, 10 discussions that aren't pull requests, opened between 24 June and 5 July 2026. Version policy 5, A first release, with nothing replaced. File health 10, Config, both copies of the template and the card agree on the architecture and the context. 11 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 41.
Agent interface Arete-27B +10
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.
Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 50
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, the same as the template in tokenizer_config.json. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says how tools are declared and how calls come back. Trained tool calling 10, the template renders several tool_call blocks in one turn, but the card presents the model as a simulator of what tools and environments return, not as a tool caller. Structured output 0, no JSON or JSON Schema output documented for the model. Reasoning control 0, the card says thinking is on by default and names the qwen3 reasoning parser, but doesn't say how to turn thinking off or budget it. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native per the card and the text config. 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 50.
Reach Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B +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.
Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 55
Memory 10, Alibaba's only build is the BF16 safetensors, 69.32 GB, and 69.32 GB × 1.2 = 83.2 GB, above 64 GB and inside the reference machine's GPU share. Runtimes 20, Four released runtimes run the architecture, vLLM 0.33.0 (Qwen3_5MoeForConditionalGeneration), SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2 (qwen3_5_moe) and llama.cpp b12242 (its Qwen conversion code). Builds 0, Alibaba publishes the BF16 weights only. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, an OSI licence, in the metadata and as a LICENSE file, with no use policy or other terms added. Download 10, the repository isn't gated, so the files download with no account and no terms to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face lists no inference provider for the model (an empty provider mapping on 10 November 2026). 10 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 55.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Arete-27B | Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 50 | 55 | Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B +5 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 55 | even |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 60 | 50 | Arete-27B +10 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 63 | 41 | Arete-27B +22 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 55.1/100 | D 52.1/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Arete-27B | Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Nous Research | Alibaba (Qwen team) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-06-25 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no 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.
Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
A specialist, not a chat model. It plays the environment an agent acts in, across seven domains, so you can train or test an agent without the real thing. Alibaba ships BF16 only, which fits a 128 GB machine, and hasn't answered a discussion on it or changed the files since June.
Before you call either
Arete-27B
- 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 - 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 - Thinking switches with
enable_thinkingin the template. The card's own evaluation ran with it off - Expect answers on politically sensitive topics to differ from Qwen3.8-27B's. That is what the fine-tune is for
- Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
- Use it as the environment, not the agent. Give it the domain's system prompt from Alibaba's GitHub repository, the history and the agent's action, and it returns the predicted observation
- With vLLM pass
--language-model-only, or startup fails on the missing vision weights - Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95 and top_k 20, and allow up to 32,768 output tokens, as the card recommends
- Keep at least 128K of context, since the simulation depends on the history
- Thinking is on by default and comes back through the qwen3 reasoning parser
- A simulated observation is a prediction. Check anything that matters against the real environment
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Arete-27B or Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B?
Arete-27B scores 55.1 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B's 52.1 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B leads on reach.
Other comparisons with Arete-27B or Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
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- Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B vs Recursive Flint
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/arete-27b-vs-qwen-agentworld-35b-a3b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/arete-27b.json·/api/v1/tools/qwen-agentworld-35b-a3b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare arete-27b qwen-agentworld-35b-a3b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "arete-27b", "b": "qwen-agentworld-35b-a3b"}at/mcp, no key