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

Darwin-36B-Opus vs Nanbeige4.3-33B

Darwin-36B-Opus and Nanbeige4.3-33B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Nanbeige4.3-33B leads on risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3341 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Darwin-36B-Opus C

Best for Reasoning-heavy text tasks on a 32 GB machine or a single 80 GB GPU, where a disclosed training method isn't required

Ahead on

  • Reach, 80 against 55

Watch for

The merge method is proprietary and the current weights include an undescribed targeted refinement

Nanbeige4.3-33B C

Best for Agents with about 96 GB of GPU memory, or the 128 GB reference machine, that want an Apache-tagged 33B model for long coding and tool loops and can wait for independent results.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 60 against 55
  • Agent interface, 85 against 70
  • Documentation and upkeep, 56 against 51

Watch for

No independent benchmark result yet; every agentic number on the card is Nanbeige's own run

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDarwin-36B-OpusNanbeige4.3-33BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258055Darwin-36B-Opus +25
Risk20%205560Nanbeige4.3-33B +5
Agent interface10%107085Nanbeige4.3-33B +15
Documentation and upkeep10%105156Nanbeige4.3-33B +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactDarwin-36B-OpusNanbeige4.3-33B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorFINAL-Bench (VIDRAFT)Nanbeige LLM Lab (BOSS Zhipin)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0 (Hub metadata only; the repository has no LICENSE file)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-04-232026-10-24
Terms last updatedno document linkedno 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)none

Verdicts

Darwin-36B-Opus

A text-only reasoning cousin merged from Qwen3.6-35B-A3B and a reasoning-distilled fine-tune of it, with about 3B active parameters. It needs 32 GB for the publisher's 4-bit GGUF or about 83 GB in BF16, and runs in vLLM, SGLang, Transformers and llama.cpp. The main risks are an undisclosed merge method, a card that disagrees with its files, and no safety results.

Nanbeige4.3-33B

A dense 33B Llama-architecture cousin for long agentic coding and office tasks, with per-request thinking, XML tool calls that stock vLLM and SGLang parse, and 512K of context. It needs about 96 GB at BF16, as Nanbeige ships no quantised build. Its agentic results so far are Nanbeige's own, with no safety results, training data notes or licence file.

Before you call either

Darwin-36B-Opus

  1. Quickest start is llama-server -hf FINAL-Bench/POCKET-35B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, about 21 GB of files
  2. On the reference machine BF16 fits, vllm serve FINAL-Bench/Darwin-36B-Opus --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, the parsers for Qwen3.6's format
  3. Thinking is on by default, send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  4. The card suggests temperature 0.6 to 0.7 and at least 5,120 new tokens for its think traces
  5. generation_config.json stops only on the end-of-text token, so add <|im_end|> as a stop token if a runtime keeps generating after the turn ends
  6. Text only, the vision encoder of Qwen3.6-35B-A3B isn't in these files
  7. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Nanbeige4.3-33B

  1. Serve with vllm serve Nanbeige/Nanbeige4.3-33B --enable-auto-tool-choice --reasoning-parser qwen3 --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, as the card says, or SGLang with the same two parsers
  2. Keep tool_call_format at its default xml, since qwen3_coder parses that format; the json option writes Hermes-style JSON calls, which need a different parser such as vLLM's hermes
  3. Pass chat_template_kwargs {"preserve_thinking": true} for multi-turn tool use and coding, and {"enable_thinking": false} to skip reasoning, as the card recommends
  4. Use temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and up to 65,536 new tokens for agent work, and temperature 0.6 for reasoning and chat, per the card
  5. Send your own system prompt, since without one the template injects a Chinese identity line, or a Chinese tool-expert prompt when tools are passed
  6. Send one system message at the start only, as the template raises an error for a later one
  7. In plain Transformers pass use_cache=True to generate, since config.json and generation_config.json set it false; trust_remote_code isn't needed

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Darwin-36B-Opus or Nanbeige4.3-33B?

Darwin-36B-Opus and Nanbeige4.3-33B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Nanbeige4.3-33B leads on risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Darwin-36B-Opus or Nanbeige4.3-33B

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