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

DeepSeek-V3.2 vs Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct

DeepSeek-V3.2 scores 58.6 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct's 55.7 (C), and leads in 2 of 5 scored categories. Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct leads on reach, risk and agent interface. 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 33

Watch for

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

Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct C

Best for Coding agents and local coding tools that want a fast, capable open model on one 24 GB GPU or a 32 GB Mac, with a plain licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 60
  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Agent interface, 75 against 60

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

No safety results, prompt-injection guidance or security contact, though it's meant to run commands

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek-V3.2Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-InstructEdge
Capability35%356933DeepSeek-V3.2 +36
Reach25%256090Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct +30
Risk20%205055Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct +5
Agent interface10%106075Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct +15
Documentation and upkeep10%103431DeepSeek-V3.2 +3
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 58.6/100C 55.7/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek-V3.2Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct
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 release2025-12-012025-12-03
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-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct

A fast coding cousin, with 3.3B of 30.5B parameters active per token, for agentic coding tools, repository reading and fill-in-the-middle without a thinking step. It needs about 21 to 23 GB at 4 bits, and several providers host it. The main risk is that it runs commands for agents with no safety results or guidance, and Alibaba doesn't answer users.

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-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct

  1. Quickest start is ollama run qwen3-coder:30b, 19 GB
  2. On our reference machine use BF16 with vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct --max-model-len 262144 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, 61 GB of weights fits the GPU share
  3. Use the qwen3_coder parser in vLLM or SGLang, not hermes, since calls come back as function and parameter blocks rather than JSON
  4. Pass tool-call arguments in the history as objects, the template iterates them as a mapping
  5. Sampling per the card is temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8, top_k 20 and repetition_penalty 1.05, with up to 65,536 output tokens
  6. For code completion use the fill-in-the-middle tokens <|fim_prefix|>, <|fim_suffix|> and <|fim_middle|> from Qwen's README
  7. Sandbox the commands and files it touches, since nothing from Alibaba covers prompt injection

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek-V3.2 or Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct?

DeepSeek-V3.2 scores 58.6 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct's 55.7 (C), and leads in 2 of 5 scored categories. Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct leads on reach, risk and agent interface.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek-V3.2 or Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct

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