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

DeepSeek-V3.2 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against DeepSeek-V3.2's 58.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 5 scored categories. DeepSeek-V3.2 leads on capability. 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

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

Ahead on

  • Capability, 69 against 58

Watch for

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

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B B

Best for Agents with a 32 GB or larger machine that want a quick, permissively licensed coding and tool-calling cousin with vision.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 60
  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Agent interface, 70 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

No safety evaluation, no agent-use guidance and no way to report a security flaw

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek-V3.2Qwen3.6-35B-A3BEdge
Capability35%356958DeepSeek-V3.2 +11
Reach25%256085Qwen3.6-35B-A3B +25
Risk20%205055Qwen3.6-35B-A3B +5
Agent interface10%106070Qwen3.6-35B-A3B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%103436Qwen3.6-35B-A3B +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 58.6/100B 63.2/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek-V3.2Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorDeepSeekAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2025-12-012026-04-16
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 reviews2.3/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

A fast mixture-of-experts cousin with 3B active parameters for coding and tool calling, with image and video input, in every major runtime under plain Apache 2.0. Ollama's 4-bit build needs about 28 GB. The main risk is that nobody at Alibaba maintains it, with no safety results, no security contact and no replies to tool-calling reports.

Before you call either

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

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

  1. Start it with ollama run qwen3.6:35b (Q4_K_M, 23 to 24 GB on disk, about 28 GB in memory)
  2. On the reference machine use vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B --max-model-len 131072 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, BF16, since vLLM doesn't document FP8 compute on gfx1151
  3. Use the qwen3_coder tool-call parser and the qwen3 reasoning parser in vLLM 0.19.0 or SGLang 0.5.10 or later
  4. Thinking is on by default and /nothink isn't supported, so pass enable_thinking as false in chat_template_kwargs for short tasks, or preserve_thinking as true to keep earlier reasoning
  5. Card sampling for thinking is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20, presence_penalty 1.5, and for non-thinking temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8
  6. Keep at least 128K of context as the card advises, and turn on YaRN only beyond 262,144 tokens
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since the model card documents none

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek-V3.2 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against DeepSeek-V3.2's 58.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 5 scored categories. DeepSeek-V3.2 leads on capability.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek-V3.2 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

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