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

Devstral Small 2 vs Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct

Devstral Small 2 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct's 41.8 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

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Which one, for what

Devstral Small 2 C

Best for Developers who want a dependable local coding agent on one consumer GPU or a 32 GB Mac

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 55
  • Risk, 60 against 55
  • Agent interface, 65 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 46 against 26

Watch for

No limitations, safety results, languages or data on the card

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct E

Best for Agents on a machine with about 96 GB to spare that need one local model to hear, see and answer by voice

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

Watch for

Only a 70.5 GB BF16 build, about 85 GB to run, with no quantised build from Alibaba

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach Devstral Small 2 +35

Devstral Small 2 90

Memory 25, the smallest build at 4 bits from a runtime's own library is Ollama's devstral-small-2 at Q4_K_M, 15 GB, and 15 GB × 1.2 = 18 GB, within 24 GB. Mistral's own FP8 files are 25.79 GB. Runtimes 25, Released vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23 and Transformers 5.22.2 have the mistral3 model, llama.cpp b12242 has the architecture with a GGUF from its own organisation, and Ollama's library has devstral-small-2. Builds 10, one quantised precision from Mistral, the FP8 weights it releases. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata and text, an OSI licence with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 5, Mistral's own API serves Devstral Small 2: the card says the model is available through its API and points there when a local runtime underperforms. 25 + 25 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 90.

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct 55

Memory earns 10, because the only build is the 70.5 GB BF16 checkpoint, about 85 GB with a fifth added, which fits only the reference machine's band. Runtimes earn 20. Transformers runs the whole model, and released vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp run its Thinker with text out, while Ollama and LM Studio have nothing. Builds score 0, with no FP8, 4-bit or GGUF build from Alibaba. Apache 2.0 with nothing added gives terms the full 15 and the ungated repository gives download the full 10. Hosted too scores 0, since no provider serves this checkpoint and Alibaba's API serves a different Flash model.

Documentation and upkeep Devstral Small 2 +20

Devstral Small 2 46

Model card 11, Intended use, the architecture, the parameters and the context are on the card. Training data 0, Nothing on the card about the training data. Last change 10, the last commit, on 15 July 2026, updated the files to match mistral-common, 118 days before this check and within 180. Responsiveness 10, Of the 23 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (9 December 2025 to 6 November 2026), 11 have a reply from a mistralai member, which is some. Version policy 5, Devstral Small 1.1 stays in its own repository, which this card links as the predecessor, with no dated note on the older card that we read. File health 10, Config, template, tokenizer and card agree, and the June and July commits fixed stray tokens and brought the files in line with mistral-common. 11 + 0 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 46.

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct 26

Model card 11, intended use, architecture, parameters and languages are there, limitations, context and a cut-off aren't. Training data 5, the report's description has no cut-off. Last change 0, nothing that runs the model has changed for over a year. Responsiveness 0, Qwen answered none of the 40 most recent discussions. Version policy 5, Qwen2.5-Omni kept without notes. File health 5, contradictory licence and language metadata and an unanswered report about long audio.

Risk Devstral Small 2 +5

Devstral Small 2 60

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, files in Mistral's verified mistralai organisation, which Mistral's site links to per our Mistral Large 4 listing (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on prompt injection, instruction priority or what the model refuses. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, threshold or change clause. Security programme 5, mistral.ai's security.txt gives a security contact and a submission policy, as read for the Mistral Large 4 listing (5). 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 60.

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct 55

File safety 25, safetensors only and no code in the repository, so the cookbook's trust_remote_code flag runs nothing. Provenance 15, files in the Qwen organisation with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published, though spoken input can trigger tool calls. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no security contact, disclosure policy or advisories for Qwen.

Agent interface Devstral Small 2 +5

Devstral Small 2 65

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (11,362 characters), with the tokenizer's tekken file for mistral-common. Tool-calling format 25, the card documents tools in the OpenAI function format with an example, names the mistral tool-call parser with auto tool choice for vLLM, shows the same for SGLang, and ships test prompts with the expected tool-call output. Trained tool calling 10, the card says the model excels at using tools, and its tests cover one tool call and calls made one at a time in sequence. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained answers for this model. Reasoning control 0, no reasoning mode is documented, and a June 2026 commit removed stray thinking tokens from the files. Context 10, 256K tokens per the card, served at 262,144 in its vLLM command. 20 + 25 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 65.

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct 60

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the cookbook shows how tools are declared and calls come back and the card covers audio, image and video input and speech output, but no parser is named. Trained tool calling 20, two calls in one turn from speech in the cookbook. Structured output 5, speech in a chosen voice and text-only output are documented, with no JSON. Reasoning control 0, no thinking in this edition. Context 5, 65,536 tokens in the config and trained at 32,768.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDevstral Small 2Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-InstructEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259055Devstral Small 2 +35
Risk20%206055Devstral Small 2 +5
Agent interface10%106560Devstral Small 2 +5
Documentation and upkeep10%104626Devstral Small 2 +20
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100E 41.8/100

Facts side by side

FactDevstral Small 2Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorMistral AIAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-152025-09-22
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (4)

Verdicts

Devstral Small 2

The easy one to run: a 24B coding agent under Apache 2.0 that five runtimes carry, 15 GB at 4 bits in Ollama, with a 256K context, image input and well-documented tool calling. It's eleven months old, calls tools one at a time, has no reasoning mode, and its card says nothing on limits, safety or data.

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct

An omni-modal cousin that listens, watches and reads, then answers in text or one of three voices, with tool calls from spoken requests, under plain Apache 2.0. Its only build, BF16, needs about 85 GB, and speech out needs Transformers or vLLM-Omni. The main risk is no answers from Qwen and no safety work for speech-driven actions.

Before you call either

Devstral Small 2

  1. ollama run devstral-small-2 is the quickest start, at 15 GB
  2. On vLLM pass --tool-call-parser mistral --enable-auto-tool-choice
  3. Send the system prompt from CHAT_SYSTEM_PROMPT.txt in the repository. The card says results depend on it
  4. Use a low temperature. The repository's default is 0.15
  5. Plan for one tool call per turn
  6. The same model is on our Mistral API listing if you'd rather not host it

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct

  1. For text answers, mkdir -p media && vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct --dtype bfloat16 --max-model-len 32768 --allowed-local-media-path "$(pwd)/media" with vLLM 0.11.1 or later serves the Thinker on an OpenAI-compatible API
  2. The card's command passes --allowed-local-media-path /, which lets anyone who can reach the server have it read any file on the machine through a file:// URL. Point it at a dedicated folder that holds only the media you mean to send, as above, and give vLLM an absolute path
  3. Send audio as audio_url and images as image_url content parts; vLLM serve doesn't take use_audio_in_video, so pass a video's audio separately
  4. For speech out, load Qwen3OmniMoeForConditionalGeneration in Transformers 4.57.0 or later with qwen-omni-utils, pick speaker Ethan, Chelsie or Aiden, and write the returned waveform at 24 kHz
  5. Call model.disable_talker() or pass return_audio=False when you only need text, which saves about 10 GB and time
  6. Parse tool calls as JSON inside <tool_call> tags yourself, since no parser is named, and confirm actions triggered by speech before running them
  7. Keep use_audio_in_video the same across every step of a conversation, the card warns results go wrong otherwise
  8. Budget memory for video, the card's table rises from 78.85 GB for 15 seconds to 144.81 GB for 120 seconds in BF16

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Devstral Small 2 or Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct?

Devstral Small 2 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct's 41.8 (E), and leads in every scored category.

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