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

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB's 61 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB leads on reach, 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 3260 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 B

Best for Agents or teams with a multi-GPU server, or a provider account, who want DeepSeek's V4 agent model under MIT with a 1M context

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

Watch for

The smallest 4-bit build is 156.4 GB, so it needs about 188 GB and doesn't fit a 128 GB machine

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB C

Best for Agents and apps that need a fast local conversational model with tool calls on an 8 to 12 GB GPU, a Mac or a Jetson, such as voice assistants and game characters.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 70
  • Risk, 80 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 against 75
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 43

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 4.0 against 2.5 out of 5

Watch for

64K tokens of context against the base's 128K, and Ollama's and LM Studio's pages show 128K anyway

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GBEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257090NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +20
Risk20%205080NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +30
Agent interface10%107585NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +10
Documentation and upkeep10%104365NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +22
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 62.4/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorDeepSeekNVIDIA
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITOpenMDW-1.1
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-312026-10-23
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)4/5 (4)

Verdicts

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

A long-context agent cousin under MIT with documented tool calls, three reasoning effort levels and support in every major runtime but Ollama. It needs about 190 to 200 GB of memory, though six inference providers serve it. The main risks are prompts built from DeepSeek's Python, no published safety results and no answers in its repository.

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

A small cousin for voice and device assistants, game characters and robot interfaces, trained for multi-turn tool calls, instruction hierarchy and short spoken replies, with thinking switchable per request. NVIDIA's Q4_K_M GGUF needs about 8 GB, and Ollama and LM Studio carry it. Context is 64K, half the Gemma 4 base, and NVIDIA publishes no safety results.

Before you call either

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

  1. vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 --trust-remote-code --kv-cache-dtype fp8 --block-size 256 --data-parallel-size 4 --enable-expert-parallel --moe-backend deep_gemm_mega_moe --attention-config '{"use_fp4_indexer_cache": true}' --speculative-config '{"method":"dspark","num_speculative_tokens":7,"draft_sample_method":"greedy"}' --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v4 --tool-call-parser deepseek_v4 --enable-auto-tool-choice --reasoning-parser deepseek_v4 (the card's 4x GB300 example plus the parser flags from vLLM's recipe)
  2. Build prompts with encoding_dsv4.py, deepseek-recipe's V4 encoder or vLLM's --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v4, since the repository has no Jinja template
  3. Tool calls come back in a DSML tool_calls block with invoke elements, string parameters carry string="true" and JSON values string="false"
  4. Set temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for agent work, and allow up to 384K output tokens at reasoning effort high or max
  5. Without the hardware, call it through a Hugging Face inference provider (Together, DeepInfra, Novita, Baseten, Scaleway, Featherless), not DeepSeek's API, where deepseek-v4-flash now means V4.1 Flash
  6. LM Studio's library build is a 156.4 GB MXFP4 GGUF and LM Studio states 156 GB minimum system memory

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

  1. Quickest start is ollama run nemotron-3.5-bolt:e4b, about 8 GB of files, and set num_ctx to 65536 or less, since NVIDIA supports 64K
  2. With NVIDIA's GGUF use llama-server -m Nemotron-3.5-Bolt-E4B-Q4_K_M.gguf -c 65536 -ngl 999 --jinja, and add --reasoning on --reasoning-budget <tokens> to cap thinking
  3. With vLLM 0.31.0 or later pass --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser gemma4 --reasoning-parser gemma4 and the repository's chat_template.jinja
  4. Pass enable_thinking explicitly in chat_template_kwargs, since the template defaults to off whatever the card says, and set skip_special_tokens false as the card's examples do
  5. Use temperature=1.0 and top_p=0.95 in both modes, as the card says
  6. Set conversational_mode true for spoken replies, which appends a brevity instruction to the system prompt
  7. Answer a slow tool at once with a pending tool message, then send the result later as a user message starting TOOL RESULT, as the card's asynchronous pattern says
  8. Keep persistent rules in the system prompt and send state updates as separate user or system messages in order, per the card's prompting guidelines

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB?

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB's 61 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB leads on reach, risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

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