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

Gemma 4 12B IT vs Hy-Memory-30B-A3B

Gemma 4 12B IT scores 72.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Hy-Memory-30B-A3B's 61 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 4969 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Gemma 4 12B IT BB

Best for Agents on a 12 GB or larger GPU or Mac that want a permissively licensed tool-calling model with images, audio and long context

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 85
  • Risk, 70 against 60
  • Agent interface, 85 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 85 against 68

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

No safety evaluation figures published

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B C

Best for Agents with an external memory framework that want a local model for the write path on a 24 GB card

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

Watch for

Not a general assistant or a tool caller

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 Gemma 4 12B IT +20

Gemma 4 12B IT 85

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Google documents how tools are declared and how calls come back, and ships a response schema for Transformers' parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, nothing documents how to ask the weights for JSON or a schema. Reasoning control 10, thinking is off by default, turned on per request, and returned in a thought channel. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B 65

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the card doesn't mention tools. Trained tool calling 10, the template can render tool calls, but the card presents the model as a memory writer that returns memories as text or JSON and says nothing of calling tools. Structured output 5, the card's quickstart asks for a JSON object with a memories list in the system prompt and shows nothing else, no response_format and no schema, so JSON output is shown by example without a documented way to constrain it. Reasoning control 10, the card passes reasoning_effort as no_think per request through chat_template_kwargs, and the template takes high, low or no_think. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native (max_position_embeddings in config.json). 20 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 65.

Documentation and upkeep Gemma 4 12B IT +17

Gemma 4 12B IT 85

Model card 20, all seven items are there. Training data 10, a general description by type with a January 2025 cut-off and the filtering, but no sources, mix or sizes. Last change 20, Google merged a fix for 210 glitch tokens in tokenizer.json on 30 October 2026, two days before 1 November. Responsiveness 20, Google replied to 18 of 34 questions and reports, the last on 2026-07-31, re-counted on 1 November. Version policy 10, earlier Gemma generations keep their own repositories and gemma.ai has a dated releases page. File health 5, the files agree with the card but a report about them waits without a reply.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B 68

Model card 8, Intended use (the write path of Mem0, MemOS and Hy-Memory), parameters (30B, about 3B active) and languages (English and Chinese, in the metadata) are there. Training data 5, A general description of the two training stages inside the harnesses, with no datasets, sizes or cut-off. Last change 20, the last commit, on 16 October 2026, added the licence and the card, 25 days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 4 discussions that aren't pull requests (16 to 30 October 2026), 3 have a reply from a tencent organisation member. Version policy 5, A first release, with nothing replaced. File health 10, Config, tokenizer and template agree on the architecture, the context and the thinking levels. 8 + 5 + 20 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 68.

Reach Gemma 4 12B IT +10

Gemma 4 12B IT 95

Memory 30, Google's own 4-bit QAT GGUF with its projector is 7.15 GB, which with a fifth on top is 8.6 GB and fits in 16 GB or less. Runtimes 25, released support in Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp, Ollama and LM Studio, six of six, all for the separate gemma4_unified architecture. Builds 15, Google publishes a Q4_0 GGUF and a w4a16 build, read as two kinds as for the 31B. Terms 15, plain Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, no account or gate. Hosted 0, the Gemini API serves only the two largest sizes and no inference provider lists this one.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B 85

Memory 25, Tencent's own Q4_K_M GGUF is 18.24 GB, and 18.24 GB × 1.2 = 21.9 GB, which fits 24 GB but not 16 GB. Its Q3_K_M file and the two files with experts at 1 or 2 bits are below 4-bit precision and don't count. Runtimes 20, hy_v3 model code in released vLLM (HYV3ForCausalLM in the v0.33.0 registry), SGLang v0.5.23 (hunyuan_v3.py), Transformers v5.22.2 and llama.cpp b12242, 5 each. Builds 15, Tencent publishes an FP8 repository and a GGUF repository with Q4_K_M, Q6_K and Q8_0 files in its own organisation, so quantised builds at two precisions or more. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, with only a preamble naming Tencent as copyright holder above the licence text. Download 10, gated is false for the main, FP8 and GGUF repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account or terms to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face lists no inference provider for the model (an empty provider mapping on 10 November 2026), and the card names no API. 25 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 85.

Risk Gemma 4 12B IT +10

Gemma 4 12B IT 70

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only, with nothing from the repository run on load. Provenance 15, the files sit in Google's own organisation and every file has a checksum. Safety evaluation 0, the card says testing showed minimal policy violations but gives no figures. Agent guidance 10, the card names the harm categories its safety training covers and asks for content-safety safeguards, and the tool guide says to validate calls, with no prompt-injection guidance. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with no added policy, no threshold and a working link. Security programme 5, Google's security.txt and reward programme give a route to report a flaw, but no public Gemma advisories were found.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B 60

File safety 25, 51 safetensors shards and no pickle or Python files. Provenance 15, files in the tencent organisation that the card's own resource list links to (10), with a SHA-256 listed for all 53 large files (5). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, no prompt-injection guidance, instruction hierarchy, account of trained refusals or general cautions on the card. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with no use policy, no field-of-use limit, no threshold and no clause letting Tencent change the terms. Security programme 5, Tencent's Security Response Center takes vulnerability reports company-wide with published reward rules, as the Hy3 listing records (5). 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 60.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGemma 4 12B ITHy-Memory-30B-A3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259585Gemma 4 12B IT +10
Risk20%207060Gemma 4 12B IT +10
Agent interface10%108565Gemma 4 12B IT +20
Documentation and upkeep10%108568Gemma 4 12B IT +17
Negative events≤1500
TotalBB 72.3/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactGemma 4 12B ITHy-Memory-30B-A3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorGoogle DeepMindTencent (Hy team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-07-202026-10-16
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews3.8/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Gemma 4 12B IT

A mid-size cousin for agent work with tools, optional thinking and image and audio input, under Apache 2.0. Google's 4-bit build needs under 9 GB with working space, so it runs on a 12 GB GPU or any recent Mac in all the common runtimes. The main risks are no published safety results and no documented JSON output.

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B

A specialist that writes an agent's long-term memory, built to slot into Mem0, MemOS or Tencent's own framework in place of a general model. It fits a 24 GB card from Tencent's own GGUF, under plain Apache 2.0, and Tencent answers on the repository. Its results are Tencent's own and nobody has rerun them.

Before you call either

Gemma 4 12B IT

  1. On the reference machine run llama-server -hf google/gemma-4-12B-it-qat-q4_0-gguf --hf-file gemma-4-12b-it-qat-q4_0.gguf --jinja -c 131072, and add --mmproj with mmproj-gemma-4-12b-it-qat-q4_0.gguf for images and audio
  2. With Ollama run ollama run gemma4:12b and raise num_ctx or OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH, since the default context is small and agents want at least 64K
  3. In vLLM or SGLang pass --tool-call-parser gemma4 --reasoning-parser gemma4 (vLLM also --enable-auto-tool-choice), or tool calls come back as text; Google's w4a16 build is the 4-bit route there
  4. Thinking is off by default; pass enable_thinking=True or start the system prompt with <|think|>, and drop earlier turns' thinking from history except on tool-call turns
  5. Put images before the text and audio after it, keep audio to 30 seconds and video to 60 frames, and validate tool names and arguments before running them
  6. Transformers needs 5.10.0 or later for gemma4_unified, and mlx-lm has no gemma4_unified code, so on a Mac use mlx-vlm, LM Studio or Ollama

Hy-Memory-30B-A3B

  1. Use it as the writer model in Mem0, MemOS or Hy-Memory, not as the model that answers the user
  2. Start it with llama-server -hf tencent/Hy-Memory-30B-A3B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, or with vLLM under the served name hy-memory as the card does
  3. Pass reasoning_effort as no_think in chat_template_kwargs and temperature 0, as the card's example does
  4. Ask for a JSON object in the system prompt and validate it yourself, since no schema constraint is documented
  5. Treat what it stores as unverified. It keeps what a conversation says, true or not

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Gemma 4 12B IT or Hy-Memory-30B-A3B?

Gemma 4 12B IT scores 72.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Hy-Memory-30B-A3B's 61 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Gemma 4 12B IT or Hy-Memory-30B-A3B

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