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

GLM-4.5-Air vs Nanbeige4.3-33B

Nanbeige4.3-33B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against GLM-4.5-Air's 59.1 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. GLM-4.5-Air leads on reach and risk. 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

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

  • Reach, 65 against 55
  • Risk, 65 against 60

Watch for

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

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.

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 56 against 38

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGLM-4.5-AirNanbeige4.3-33BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256555GLM-4.5-Air +10
Risk20%206560GLM-4.5-Air +5
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%103856Nanbeige4.3-33B +18
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59.1/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactGLM-4.5-AirNanbeige4.3-33B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorZ.ai (Zhipu AI)Nanbeige LLM Lab (BOSS Zhipin)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0 (Hub metadata only; the repository has no LICENSE file)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2025-08-112026-10-24
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 reviews2.8/5 (4)none

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.

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

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

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, GLM-4.5-Air or Nanbeige4.3-33B?

Nanbeige4.3-33B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against GLM-4.5-Air's 59.1 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. GLM-4.5-Air leads on reach and risk.

Other comparisons with GLM-4.5-Air or Nanbeige4.3-33B

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