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

GLM-4.5-Air vs Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2

Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against GLM-4.5-Air's 59.1 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. GLM-4.5-Air leads on risk and 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

  • Risk, 65 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 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

Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2 C

Best for Hobbyist and research agents that want a faster-finishing Qwen3.8-27B for local coding loops on a 24 GB GPU.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 56 against 38

Watch for

Published from a personal account, with no organisation, security contact or safety evaluation

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGLM-4.5-AirQwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256585Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2 +20
Risk20%206550GLM-4.5-Air +15
Agent interface10%108560GLM-4.5-Air +25
Documentation and upkeep10%103856Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2 +18
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59.1/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactGLM-4.5-AirQwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorZ.ai (Zhipu AI)Jackrong
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0 (metadata only, no LICENSE file); built on Qwen3.8-27B under Apache 2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2025-08-112026-09-21
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)2.5/5 (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.

Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2

A Qwen3.8-27B cousin tuned to think less per turn in long agent loops, with an MTP head for speculative decoding in llama.cpp. It fits 24 GB with Jackrong's 4-bit GGUF. The risks are one person's experimental release with no safety work, training traces taken from Claude and GPT, and a tool format that differs from Qwen's.

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

Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2

  1. Quickest start is llama-server -hf Jackrong/Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, about 17 GB, and add mmproj-F32.gguf for images
  2. The card's tests used Q5_K_M with the bundled MTP head and --spec-type draft-mtp in llama.cpp
  3. The template asks for tool calls as JSON inside tool_call tags, so use a Hermes-style parser (vLLM's hermes), not Qwen3.8's qwen3_coder
  4. For coding the card recommends enable_thinking true, reasoning_effort xhigh and temperature 0.3, which you must pass yourself, since generation_config.json says 1.0
  5. reasoning_effort takes xhigh (default), medium or low, and any other value makes the template raise an error
  6. Earlier reasoning stays in the context unless preserve_thinking is false
  7. Cap max_tokens, since a report says it loops more than V1

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, GLM-4.5-Air or Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2?

Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against GLM-4.5-Air's 59.1 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. GLM-4.5-Air leads on risk and agent interface.

Other comparisons with GLM-4.5-Air or Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2

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