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

Cosmos-Reason2-2B vs DeepSeek-V3.2

Cosmos-Reason2-2B and DeepSeek-V3.2 score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 59.5 (C) and 58.6 (C). Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Cosmos-Reason2-2B C

Best for Agents that need a small local model to reason over camera footage and images for robotics, driving or smart spaces

Ahead on

  • Reach, 65 against 60
  • Risk, 60 against 50
  • Agent interface, 65 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 39 against 34

Watch for

Gated behind a click-through licence that needs a Hugging Face account

DeepSeek-V3.2 C

Best for Teams with an eight-GPU server who want an MIT agent model with broad runtime support, or agents calling it through a hosted provider

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

Watch for

689.5 GB of FP8 files and no smaller build from DeepSeek or a runtime library, far beyond 107.4 GB

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCosmos-Reason2-2BDeepSeek-V3.2Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256560Cosmos-Reason2-2B +5
Risk20%206050Cosmos-Reason2-2B +10
Agent interface10%106560Cosmos-Reason2-2B +5
Documentation and upkeep10%103934Cosmos-Reason2-2B +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59.5/100C 58.6/100

Facts side by side

FactCosmos-Reason2-2BDeepSeek-V3.2
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNVIDIADeepSeek
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceNVIDIA Open Model License (custom, commercial use allowed, not an OSI licence); built on Qwen3-VL-2B-Instruct under Apache 2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-03-102025-12-01
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Cosmos-Reason2-2B

A small local cousin for reasoning over video and images in robotics, driving and warehouse scenes, returning points, boxes and timed events as JSON. The 4.9 GB file runs in Transformers or vLLM, though NVIDIA asks for 24 GB of GPU memory. Development has moved to Cosmos 3, and the gated licence is revocable.

DeepSeek-V3.2

DeepSeek-V3.2 is an MIT-licensed reasoning model trained for parallel tool calls, with thinking chosen per request, for long agent work. It needs about 690 GB of FP8 files, eight 80 GB GPUs in vLLM's recipe and prompts built from DeepSeek's Python. The main risk is neglect, with no file changes since December 2025 and no safety evaluation.

Before you call either

Cosmos-Reason2-2B

  1. Accept the licence on the Hugging Face card with a signed-in account and set HF_TOKEN before downloading
  2. Serve it with vllm serve nvidia/Cosmos-Reason2-2B --max-model-len 16384 --media-io-kwargs '{"video": {"num_frames": -1}}' --reasoning-parser qwen3, keeping max-model-len between 8,192 and 16,384 as NVIDIA advises
  3. For local video or images, make a folder for them (mkdir -p media) and pass --allowed-local-media-path "$(pwd)/media", so the server can read only that folder, not everything under the directory you start it from
  4. Sample video at 4 fps and allow at least 4,096 output tokens so the reasoning isn't cut off
  5. For reasoning, add the card's instruction to answer with a think block and then the answer; leave it out for a direct reply
  6. Use NVIDIA's prompt files (prompts/*.yaml in nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-reason2) when you want JSON boxes, events or trajectories, and validate the JSON yourself
  7. Check its plans before a robot acts on them, since NVIDIA's own safety card warns of collision and manipulation risks

DeepSeek-V3.2

  1. Start it with vLLM's recipe, vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v32 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser deepseek_v32 --reasoning-parser deepseek_v3
  2. It doesn't fit the 107.4 GB reference machine at any qualifying build, so call DeepInfra (deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2) or SambaNova (DeepSeek-V3.2) instead
  3. Outside vLLM, build prompts with encoding/encoding_dsv32.py and wrap parse_message_from_completion_text in error handling, since DeepSeek says it handles well-formed output only
  4. Pick thinking or chat with thinking_mode, and read the reasoning from reasoning_content
  5. Send developer messages only for search-agent prompts, the only use DeepSeek gives that role
  6. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 and keep prompts within 128K tokens

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Cosmos-Reason2-2B or DeepSeek-V3.2?

Cosmos-Reason2-2B and DeepSeek-V3.2 score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 59.5 (C) and 58.6 (C).

Other comparisons with Cosmos-Reason2-2B or DeepSeek-V3.2

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