# Carbon-X vs ZAYA1-8B (slim)

> Carbon-X and ZAYA1-8B score within a point of each other for open-weight models you run yourself, 61 and 61 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/carbon-x-vs-zaya1-8b.md (~8,750 tokens) · this version ~630 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/carbon-x-vs-zaya1-8b.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/carbon-x-vs-zaya1-8b
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-10
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Carbon-X and ZAYA1-8B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). ZAYA1-8B leads on agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Carbon-X: C 61, rank #42 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/carbon-x.min.md
- ZAYA1-8B: C 61, rank #85 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zaya1-8b.min.md
- Carbon-X, good for Agents that need a second opinion on DNA variants and regulatory regions on a 16 to 24 GB machine, without sending sequences to a hosted model. Ahead on Reach, 90 against 80; Risk, 65 against 55; Documentation and upkeep, 72 against 50.
- ZAYA1-8B, good for People who want a small, fast reasoning model for maths and code and can live without tool calling Ahead on Agent interface, 60 against 35.

| Category | Carbon-X | ZAYA1-8B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 90 | 80 |
| Risk (20%) | 65 | 55 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 35 | 60 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 72 | 50 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Carbon-X | ZAYA1-8B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Hugging Face (HuggingFaceBio) | Zyphra |
| Last release | 2026-10-28 | 2026-07-02 |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Agent interface, ZAYA1-8B +25: Carbon-X 35 (Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository.); ZAYA1-8B 60 (Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (10,700 characters).)
- Documentation and upkeep, Carbon-X +22: Carbon-X 72 (Model card 17, everything but a knowledge cut-off.); ZAYA1-8B 50 (Model card 5, Intended use and the parameter counts are on the card.)
- Reach, Carbon-X +10: Carbon-X 90 (Memory 30, the publisher's Q4_K_M GGUF is 9.6 GB, or 11.6 GB with a fifth added.); ZAYA1-8B 80 (Memory 30, the smallest build from Zyphra is the MXFP4-Experts repository, 5.85 GB, and 5.85 GB × 1.2 = 7.0 GB, within 16 GB.)
- Risk, Carbon-X +10: Carbon-X 65 (File safety 15, safetensors and GGUF only, but the documented loading path runs the repository's tokenizer.py through trust_remote_code.); ZAYA1-8B 55 (File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository.)