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

GLM-4.5-Air vs Muse Glimmer 30B

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against GLM-4.5-Air's 59.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. GLM-4.5-Air leads on agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

GLM-4.5-Air C

Best for Agents with two to four datacentre GPUs, or a provider account, who want a permissively licensed English and Chinese tool-calling model with wide runtime support.

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 85 against 75

Watch for

Z.ai's smallest build is FP8 at about 135 GB in use, with no 4-bit build of its own

Muse Glimmer 30B BB

Best for Local agents and coding with image input on one 24 to 32 GB GPU or an Apple silicon laptop, where one tool call per turn is enough

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 65
  • Risk, 80 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 38

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.8 against 2.8 out of 5

Watch for

One tool call per turn and no parallel calls

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGLM-4.5-AirMuse Glimmer 30BEdge
Capability35%355050even
Reach25%256590Muse Glimmer 30B +25
Risk20%206580Muse Glimmer 30B +15
Agent interface10%108575GLM-4.5-Air +10
Documentation and upkeep10%103865Muse Glimmer 30B +27
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59.1/100BB 70/100

Facts side by side

FactGLM-4.5-AirMuse Glimmer 30B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorZ.ai (Zhipu AI)Meta
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2025-08-112026-10-20
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 reviews2.8/5 (4)3.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

GLM-4.5-Air

An English and Chinese cousin for agent, coding and tool-calling work, with switchable thinking and wide runtime support. It needs about 135 GB for Z.ai's FP8 build, two to four H100s by Z.ai's figures, and Z.ai and Novita host it. The main risk is age, with files from August 2025 and no answers from Z.ai since.

Muse Glimmer 30B

A dense 30B multimodal cousin for local agent and coding work with images, documented tool calls and adjustable reasoning. Meta's 17 GB GGUF fits a 24 GB card and runs in llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers. The main risks are one tool call per turn, no documented JSON output and a usage policy that adds limits to Apache 2.0.

Before you call either

GLM-4.5-Air

  1. Z.ai's FP8 recipe is python3 -m sglang.launch_server --model-path zai-org/GLM-4.5-Air-FP8 --tp-size 4 --tool-call-parser glm45 --reasoning-parser glm45, and 2 H100s are enough below the full 128K context
  2. Use the glm45 tool and reasoning parsers for this model, the glm47 parser in Z.ai's current README is for GLM-4.7
  3. Thinking is on by default, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, which makes the template add /nothink and an empty think block
  4. Declare tools in OpenAI style, and the template renders arguments as arg_key and arg_value pairs that the parser turns back into JSON
  5. Keep prompts under 128,000 tokens, the tokenizer config's limit, though config.json allows 131,072
  6. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented for the weights

Muse Glimmer 30B

  1. Start it with llama serve -hf meta-models/Muse-Glimmer-30B-GGUF --hf-file Muse-Glimmer-30B-KQuant-17GB-Q4_K_M.gguf -ngl 99 -c 131072 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8080 --chat-template-kwargs '{"reasoning_strength":"high"}' on llama.cpp b10353 or later, or ollama run muse-glimmer on Ollama 0.32.7 or later
  2. In vLLM pass --tool-call-parser muse_glimmer --reasoning-parser muse_glimmer, in SGLang muse for both, in ExecuTorch --tool-parser atem. Without them tool calls come back as plain text
  3. Set reasoning per request with chat_template_kwargs.reasoning_strength (low, medium, high or xhigh). llama.cpp and ExecuTorch don't read reasoning_effort, and ExecuTorch rejects it with a 400
  4. Expect one tool call per turn and return each result before the next. ExecuTorch's server rejects tool_choice="required"
  5. Keep temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 64, don't run greedy, and never stop on <|eom|>
  6. Leave max_tokens room for reasoning, since in llama.cpp a request cut off mid-thought returns empty content with finish_reason length
  7. For images add Meta's 1.4 GB mmproj GGUF, which takes the build to about 22 GB with the runtime's fifth

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, GLM-4.5-Air or Muse Glimmer 30B?

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against GLM-4.5-Air's 59.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. GLM-4.5-Air leads on agent interface.

Other comparisons with GLM-4.5-Air or Muse Glimmer 30B

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.