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

Gemma 4 E4B IT vs Nanbeige4.3-33B

Gemma 4 E4B IT scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against Nanbeige4.3-33B's 61 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3341 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Gemma 4 E4B IT B

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 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 75 against 56

Watch for

No safety evaluation figures published

Nanbeige4.3-33B C

Best for Agents with about 96 GB of GPU memory, or the 128 GB reference machine, that want an Apache-tagged 33B model for long coding and tool loops and can wait for independent results.

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

Watch for

No independent benchmark result yet; every agentic number on the card is Nanbeige's own run

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGemma 4 E4B ITNanbeige4.3-33BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259555Gemma 4 E4B IT +40
Risk20%207060Gemma 4 E4B IT +10
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%107556Gemma 4 E4B IT +19
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 63.2/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactGemma 4 E4B ITNanbeige4.3-33B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorGoogle DeepMindNanbeige LLM Lab (BOSS Zhipin)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0 (Hub metadata only; the repository has no LICENSE file)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-07-202026-10-24
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 reviews3.5/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Gemma 4 E4B IT

A small cousin for light agent work, tool-calling loops, transcription and image reading on a phone or laptop, under Apache 2.0. Google's 4-bit build needs about 7 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, with no published safety results.

Nanbeige4.3-33B

A dense 33B Llama-architecture cousin for long agentic coding and office tasks, with per-request thinking, XML tool calls that stock vLLM and SGLang parse, and 512K of context. It needs about 96 GB at BF16, as Nanbeige ships no quantised build. Its agentic results so far are Nanbeige's own, with no safety results, training data notes or licence file.

Before you call either

Gemma 4 E4B IT

  1. On the reference machine run llama-server -hf google/gemma-4-E4B-it-qat-q4_0-gguf --hf-file gemma-4-E4B_q4_0-it.gguf --jinja -c 131072, and add --mmproj with gemma-4-E4B-it-mmproj.gguf for images and audio
  2. With Ollama run ollama run gemma4:e4b 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

Nanbeige4.3-33B

  1. Serve with vllm serve Nanbeige/Nanbeige4.3-33B --enable-auto-tool-choice --reasoning-parser qwen3 --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, as the card says, or SGLang with the same two parsers
  2. Keep tool_call_format at its default xml, since qwen3_coder parses that format; the json option writes Hermes-style JSON calls, which need a different parser such as vLLM's hermes
  3. Pass chat_template_kwargs {"preserve_thinking": true} for multi-turn tool use and coding, and {"enable_thinking": false} to skip reasoning, as the card recommends
  4. Use temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and up to 65,536 new tokens for agent work, and temperature 0.6 for reasoning and chat, per the card
  5. Send your own system prompt, since without one the template injects a Chinese identity line, or a Chinese tool-expert prompt when tools are passed
  6. Send one system message at the start only, as the template raises an error for a later one
  7. In plain Transformers pass use_cache=True to generate, since config.json and generation_config.json set it false; trust_remote_code isn't needed

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Gemma 4 E4B IT or Nanbeige4.3-33B?

Gemma 4 E4B IT scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against Nanbeige4.3-33B's 61 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories.

Other comparisons with Gemma 4 E4B IT or Nanbeige4.3-33B

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