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

Arete-27B vs Recursive Flint

Recursive Flint scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Arete-27B's 55.1 (C), 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 4969 open weights comparisons

Arete-27BNous Research · Open-weight model C55.1/100#105 of 135 open-weight models Recursive FlintRecursive · Open-weight model C61/100#54 of 135 open-weight models

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

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

Watch for

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

Recursive Flint C

Best for Agents doing repository work on a 32 to 48 GB Mac or NVIDIA box that want a sparse coder with documented tool calls and a plain licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 50
  • Risk, 60 against 55
  • Agent interface, 90 against 60

Watch for

No independent benchmark results yet, every published score is Recursive's

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 Recursive Flint +35

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.

Recursive Flint 85

Memory 20 of 30, Recursive's MLX INT4 build is 22.6 GB, or 27.1 GB with a fifth added, which fits 32 GB, and every other 4-bit build lands in the same band. Runtimes 25 of 25, released llama.cpp (b11803), Ollama 0.40.8, LM Studio's catalogue, Transformers v5.21 and vLLM v0.33.0 run it, while SGLang has only a development image. Builds 15, MLX INT4 plus Q4_1 and NVFP4 GGUFs from Recursive. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, OpenRouter lists a free endpoint with Recursive as its provider, but it wasn't serving on 3 November 2026, with 0 per cent uptime over the last day.

Agent interface Recursive Flint +30

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.

Recursive Flint 90

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository and inside both GGUFs. Tool-calling format 25, Recursive's serving README documents how tools go in, how calls come back and the flint parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn. Structured output 15, response_format with JSON Schema is documented. Reasoning control 0, the model decides when to reason and Recursive says there's no switch or budget. Context 10, 262,144 tokens with no position scaling.

Risk Recursive Flint +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.

Recursive Flint 60

File safety 15 of 25, safetensors and GGUF only, but the card's documented BF16 route installs the wheel shipped in the repository. Provenance 15, the files are in the RecursiveSI organisation that Recursive's own engine downloads from, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 0, none on the cards or in the announcement post. Agent guidance 10, the card and serving README say to enforce permissions around tool use and to strip tool tags from untrusted tool output, but there's no trained instruction hierarchy. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0. Security programme 5, a reporting address on the card and a private reporting route for the engine, with no public advisories yet.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runArete-27BRecursive FlintEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255085Recursive Flint +35
Risk20%205560Recursive Flint +5
Agent interface10%106090Recursive Flint +30
Documentation and upkeep10%106367Recursive Flint +4
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.1/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactArete-27BRecursive Flint
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNous ResearchRecursive
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-062026-10-21
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Arete-27B

No score change since it was listed.

Recursive Flint

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.

Recursive Flint

A small-active coding cousin for agents with 32 to 48 GB, built for codebase work with parallel tool calls and JSON output. Released llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM and Transformers run it, while Recursive's free OpenRouter endpoint wasn't serving on 3 November 2026. Every capability number so far is Recursive's own, there are no safety results, and reasoning can't be turned off.

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

Recursive Flint

  1. Quickest start is ollama run flint (Ollama 0.40.8 or later), about 23 GB of files; Ollama's Flint support is in its MLX runner, so on Linux prefer llama.cpp
  2. With llama.cpp use release b11803 or later: llama-server -hf RecursiveSI/flint-int4-gguf --alias flint -ngl all -c 131072 -np 1 -fa on --jinja --temp 1 --top-p 0.95 --top-k 20 --min-p 0, and keep --jinja on
  3. Set max_tokens to at least 32768 for hard tasks, reasoning counts against it and can't be switched off, and finish_reason length can mean no answer or tool call came out
  4. Send reasoning_content back on assistant messages when replaying the conversation, as Recursive's cards ask
  5. Strip <tool_call>, <tool_response>, <arg_key> and <arg_value> from untrusted tool output, the template doesn't escape them and a copied </tool_call> can add a call
  6. Message content must be a string, flatten content-part arrays first
  7. Recursive's SGLang servers listen on 0.0.0.0 with no key, publish the port on localhost only or pass --api-key
  8. Check OpenRouter's endpoints list before calling recursive/flint-v1.0:free, since its only endpoint (Recursive, BF16) showed 0 per cent uptime over the last day on 3 November 2026
  9. vLLM needs v0.33.0 or later and Transformers v5.21 or later; released SGLang has no Flint model

Questions

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

Recursive Flint scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Arete-27B's 55.1 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Arete-27B or Recursive Flint

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