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

EXAONE 4.5 33B vs Kimi K3

Kimi K3 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against EXAONE 4.5 33B's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. EXAONE 4.5 33B leads on reach, 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 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

EXAONE 4.5 33B C

Best for Researchers and students working on documents, Korean or multimodal agents who don't need commercial rights

Ahead on

  • Reach, 65 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 50 against 41

Watch for

Research and education only. No commercial use of the model or its output

Kimi K3 B

Best for Teams with a multi-node GPU cluster who want an open 1M-context agent model for long coding and research work

Ahead on

  • Risk, 65 against 50

Watch for

1,561 GB of files at its smallest publisher build, far beyond any single machine

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.

Agent interface EXAONE 4.5 33B +20

EXAONE 4.5 33B 85

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (5,930 characters). Tool-calling format 25, the card's vLLM command names the parser, hermes with auto tool choice, and its agentic example calls tools from MCP servers through the OpenAI-compatible API, so declaration and return follow that API. Trained tool calling 20, the card reports agentic tool use among its language results and shows an agent run with several tool servers, and the template renders every call in a turn. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking is on by default and the card says to set it false for the non-reasoning mode, with an example of each. Context 10, 262,144 tokens per the card's configuration table and config.json, and the card's serve commands run at that length. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

Kimi K3 65

The chat template earns 10, because there is no Jinja template and the prompt format exists only as encoding_k3.py, code you run. The tool-calling format earns 10, since Moonshot documents the tools channel but the parser name comes only from vLLM's and SGLang's own recipes. Trained tool calling earns 20 for indexed parallel calls in one turn. Structured output earns 5, as the card names it among its linked guides without saying how to ask the weights for it, and the how sits in hosted-API docs. Reasoning control earns 10, with per-request effort documented on the card and reasoning returned as reasoning_content. Context earns 10 for 1,048,576 tokens trained in.

Reach EXAONE 4.5 33B +15

EXAONE 4.5 33B 65

Memory 20, the smallest build at 4 bits is LG's IQ4_XS GGUF, 18.03 GB with the 2.57 GB projector, and 20.60 GB × 1.2 = 24.7 GB, within 32 GB. Without the projector, for text only, it would fit 24 GB. Runtimes 15, Released vLLM 0.33.0 has exaone4_5.py, Transformers 5.22.2 has the exaone4_5 model, and llama.cpp b12242 has the architecture, with LG's own GGUF. Three at 5 each. Builds 15, LG publishes GGUF at five quantised precisions, an AWQ build and an FP8 build. Terms 5, Research and educational use only. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for all four repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and no click-through, though the licence says downloading is acceptance. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and the card names no API that serves it. 20 + 15 + 15 + 5 + 10 + 0 = 65.

Kimi K3 50

Memory earns nothing, because the only build of 4-bit precision or better from Moonshot or a runtime's own library is Moonshot's MXFP4 release of 1,561 GB, about 1,873 GB with the fifth added, far above 256 GB. Ollama and LM Studio list it only as a cloud model. Runtimes earn 15, for model code in released vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp; Transformers has no kimi_k3 code of its own and loads Moonshot's remote code, so it doesn't count. Builds earn 10 for one publisher precision, the MXFP4 files the model was trained for. Terms earn 10, a custom MIT-based licence that is free for commercial use below a revenue threshold. Download earns 10, with no gate and no account. Hosted earns 5, since Moonshot's API serves it and five inference providers are live for it on Hugging Face.

Risk Kimi K3 +15

EXAONE 4.5 33B 50

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the LGAI-EXAONE organisation (LG AI Research on the Hub), which the card's GitHub repository shares a name with and the licence in the repository is LG's (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions: the limitation section lists inappropriate, biased, incorrect and outdated answers and tells users not to try to induce harmful output. Licence risk 5, 15 less 5 for field-of-use limits beyond the law (no commercial use, no building competing models) and 5 for terms the licensor can change or revoke (LG may amend the agreement at any time, and the licence is revocable). Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card beyond a support contact, and www.lgresearch.ai has no security.txt. 25 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 0 = 50.

Kimi K3 65

File safety earns 15, safetensors only with no pickle files, less 10 because the documented loading path runs Moonshot's Python with trust_remote_code and builds prompts with encoding_k3.py. Provenance earns the full 15, files in the organisation Moonshot links to with a SHA-256 for every shard. Safety evaluation earns 20 for the cyber assessment the UK AI Security Institute and CAISI ran and published, which found its safeguards didn't stop exploit development. Agent guidance earns 5 for the blog's general cautions about proactiveness and passing back thinking. Licence risk earns 10, losing 5 for the model-as-a-service revenue threshold and nothing else. The security programme earns nothing, with no security.txt, disclosure policy, SECURITY.md or public advisories found.

Documentation and upkeep EXAONE 4.5 33B +9

EXAONE 4.5 33B 50

Model card 20, Uses (the quickstart's question answering, document and agent examples), limitations, the architecture, the parameters, the context, the languages (in the metadata) and a knowledge cut-off of December 2024 are all on the card. Training data 5, A knowledge cut-off and one line on excluding personal, harmful and biased content, with no sources or sizes. Last change 10, the main repository last changed on 6 July 2026 (dependencies moved to official releases), 127 days before this check, and the FP8 repository on 9 August, 93 days. Responsiveness 0, none of the 5 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (13 April to 4 May 2026) has a reply from an LGAI-EXAONE member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, EXAONE 4.0 and 4.0.1 stay in their own repositories and 4.5 came out in new ones, with no dated note on the older cards that we read. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture and the 262,144 tokens, and a July commit moved the dependencies to released versions. 20 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 50.

Kimi K3 41

The model card earns 11, covering intended use, architecture, parameters and context, but not limitations, languages or a knowledge cut-off. Training data earns 5 for a general description with no cut-off. The last change earns 15, an encoding_k3.py update on 20 August, 74 days before 2 November and within 90; the GitHub repository's last commit is 6 August. Responsiveness earns nothing, with no Moonshot reply in the 40 most recent discussions. Version policy earns 5 for a first release. File health earns 5, because a report that the tokeniser goes past the declared vocabulary waits without a reply.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runEXAONE 4.5 33BKimi K3Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256550EXAONE 4.5 33B +15
Risk20%205065Kimi K3 +15
Agent interface10%108565EXAONE 4.5 33B +20
Documentation and upkeep10%105041EXAONE 4.5 33B +9
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100B 62.4/100

Facts side by side

FactEXAONE 4.5 33BKimi K3
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorLG AI ResearchMoonshot AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceEXAONE AI Model License Agreement 1.2 - NC (research and education only)Kimi K3 License (modified MIT)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-062026-09-02
Terms last updatednot read yetno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

EXAONE 4.5 33B

A well-documented vision-language model with a full set of builds, tool calling, switchable reasoning, a 256K context and a stated knowledge cut-off. The licence decides whether you can use it: research and education only, output included, and LG can change the terms. Nothing answered on the repository and no safety results.

Kimi K3

Kimi K3 is a 2.8T multimodal agent model with a 1M-token context, parallel tool calls and per-request effort, for long coding and research sessions. Its 1,561 GB of files need a multi-node GPU cluster, so most agents will call a hosted copy. The main risks are Moonshot's Python running at load and prompt time, and no answers in its repository.

Before you call either

EXAONE 4.5 33B

  1. Don't use it, or anything it writes, commercially. The licence covers the output too
  2. Serve it with vLLM and --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser hermes
  3. Set enable_thinking false for a direct answer. Thinking is on by default
  4. Use temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and presence_penalty 1.5 in general, and temperature 0.6 with top_k 20 for documents and Korean
  5. For llama.cpp, load a projector file from LG's GGUF repository with the weights for image input
  6. Its knowledge stops at December 2024

Kimi K3

  1. Start it with SGLang on a node of 8 B300s, sglang serve --trust-remote-code --model-path moonshotai/Kimi-K3 --tp-size 8 --context-length 65536 --mem-fraction-static 0.82 --reasoning-parser kimi_k3 --tool-call-parser kimi_k3 --port 30000
  2. Use the kimi_k3 tool-call and reasoning parsers in vLLM or SGLang, and validate tool-call arguments against the schema, since vLLM's recipe says K3 sometimes emits a format its parser doesn't expect
  3. Pass the whole assistant message back every turn, reasoning_content and tool_calls included, or output becomes unstable
  4. Thinking is always on; set reasoning_effort to low or high when max is too slow
  5. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, with top-p 0.95 for single-step tasks and 1.0 for agentic ones
  6. Don't hand an ongoing session from another model to K3, and state boundaries in the system prompt, since Moonshot warns it can act on its own when intent is unclear
  7. Without the hardware, call it through Moonshot's API or an inference provider listed on its Hugging Face page

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, EXAONE 4.5 33B or Kimi K3?

Kimi K3 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against EXAONE 4.5 33B's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. EXAONE 4.5 33B leads on reach, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with EXAONE 4.5 33B or Kimi K3

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.