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

Gemma 4 E2B IT vs Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

Gemma 4 E2B IT scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B's 52.1 (D), 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 E2B IT C

Best for Agents that need a cheap, permissively licensed helper on 8 GB of memory, for tool calls, short audio or images, rather than hard reasoning

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 55
  • Risk, 70 against 55
  • Agent interface, 85 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 75 against 41

Watch for

No safety evaluation figures published

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B D

Best for Agent builders who want to train or test an agent against simulated tools, terminals, browsers and phones on a 128 GB machine

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

Watch for

Not a general assistant, and the card doesn't describe using it to call tools

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 Gemma 4 E2B IT +40

Gemma 4 E2B IT 95

Memory 30, Google's own 4-bit QAT GGUF with its projector is 4.34 GB, which with a fifth on top is 5.2 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. Builds 15, Google publishes a Q4_0 GGUF and a w4a16 build and two mobile builds, 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.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 55

Memory 10, Alibaba's only build is the BF16 safetensors, 69.32 GB, and 69.32 GB × 1.2 = 83.2 GB, above 64 GB and inside the reference machine's GPU share. Runtimes 20, Four released runtimes run the architecture, vLLM 0.33.0 (Qwen3_5MoeForConditionalGeneration), SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2 (qwen3_5_moe) and llama.cpp b12242 (its Qwen conversion code). Builds 0, Alibaba publishes the BF16 weights only. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, an OSI licence, in the metadata and as a LICENSE file, with no use policy or other terms added. Download 10, the repository isn't gated, so the files download with no account and no terms to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face lists no inference provider for the model (an empty provider mapping on 10 November 2026). 10 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 55.

Agent interface Gemma 4 E2B IT +35

Gemma 4 E2B 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, 131,072 tokens native, which meets the 128K line.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 50

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, the same as the template in tokenizer_config.json. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says how tools are declared and how calls come back. Trained tool calling 10, the template renders several tool_call blocks in one turn, but the card presents the model as a simulator of what tools and environments return, not as a tool caller. Structured output 0, no JSON or JSON Schema output documented for the model. Reasoning control 0, the card says thinking is on by default and names the qwen3 reasoning parser, but doesn't say how to turn thinking off or budget it. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native per the card and the text config. 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 50.

Documentation and upkeep Gemma 4 E2B IT +34

Gemma 4 E2B IT 75

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 233 glitch tokens in tokenizer.json on 3 November 2026, a day before 4 November. Responsiveness 10, Google replied to 9 of 24 questions and reports, the last on 2026-09-15, re-counted on 4 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.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 41

Model card 11, the card gives intended use (simulating agent environments), architecture, parameters and context length. Training data 5, A general description without a cut-off, the three training stages and a statement that no outputs from external API services were included. Last change 10, the last commit was on 25 June 2026, an update to the card, 138 days before this check, past 90 days and within 180. Responsiveness 0, 10 discussions that aren't pull requests, opened between 24 June and 5 July 2026. Version policy 5, A first release, with nothing replaced. File health 10, Config, both copies of the template and the card agree on the architecture and the context. 11 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 41.

Risk Gemma 4 E2B IT +15

Gemma 4 E2B 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.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 55

File safety 25, 21 safetensors shards and no pickle or Python files, and config.json has no auto_map. Provenance 15, files sit in the Qwen organisation, the one Alibaba's Qwen repositories on GitHub link to per the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B listing (10), and the Hub gives a SHA-256 for every large file (5). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, no prompt-injection guidance, instruction hierarchy, refusal statement or general cautions on the card. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, no threshold and no terms the licensor can change or revoke, and the card's licence link points at the LICENSE file in the repository. Security programme 0, no reporting route on the card. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGemma 4 E2B ITQwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259555Gemma 4 E2B IT +40
Risk20%207055Gemma 4 E2B IT +15
Agent interface10%108550Gemma 4 E2B IT +35
Documentation and upkeep10%107541Gemma 4 E2B IT +34
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 60.4/100D 52.1/100

Facts side by side

FactGemma 4 E2B ITQwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorGoogle DeepMindAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-11-032026-06-25
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews3.5/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Gemma 4 E2B IT

A small open-weight model for light agent work, tool calls, short audio and images on a phone or laptop, under Apache 2.0. Google's 4-bit build needs about 5 GB with working space and runs in all the common runtimes. Google's card puts it far below larger Gemma 4 sizes on agent and coding tasks, and no safety results are published.

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

A specialist, not a chat model. It plays the environment an agent acts in, across seven domains, so you can train or test an agent without the real thing. Alibaba ships BF16 only, which fits a 128 GB machine, and hasn't answered a discussion on it or changed the files since June.

Before you call either

Gemma 4 E2B IT

  1. On the reference machine run llama-server -hf google/gemma-4-E2B-it-qat-q4_0-gguf --hf-file gemma-4-E2B_q4_0-it.gguf --jinja -c 131072, and add --mmproj with gemma-4-E2B-it-mmproj.gguf for images and audio
  2. With Ollama run ollama run gemma4:e2b 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

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

  1. Use it as the environment, not the agent. Give it the domain's system prompt from Alibaba's GitHub repository, the history and the agent's action, and it returns the predicted observation
  2. With vLLM pass --language-model-only, or startup fails on the missing vision weights
  3. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95 and top_k 20, and allow up to 32,768 output tokens, as the card recommends
  4. Keep at least 128K of context, since the simulation depends on the history
  5. Thinking is on by default and comes back through the qwen3 reasoning parser
  6. A simulated observation is a prediction. Check anything that matters against the real environment

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Gemma 4 E2B IT or Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B?

Gemma 4 E2B IT scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B's 52.1 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Gemma 4 E2B IT or Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

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