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

GLM-5.3 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

GLM-5.3 scores 64.6 (B) on agent readiness against MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 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 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

GLM-5.3 B

Best for Teams with an 8-GPU server who want an open coding and long-horizon agent model with a 1M-token context, or agents that call it through Z.ai or a hosted provider

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 58 against 40

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

Z.ai's smallest build is 755.6 GB in FP8, with no local Ollama or LM Studio build

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B C

Best for Researchers and agents that want a small coding and terminal-agent model to fine-tune further, on a 24 GB GPU or larger.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 70 against 55
  • Risk, 60 against 50

Watch for

Only BF16 from Xiaomi, about 23 GB to run

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGLM-5.3MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255570MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +15
Risk20%205060MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +10
Agent interface10%107070even
Documentation and upkeep10%105840GLM-5.3 +18
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 64.6/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactGLM-5.3MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorZ.ai (Zhipu AI)Xiaomi (MiMo team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceGLM-5.3 License (MIT-style, with a security review for the largest model-as-a-service operators)MIT (metadata only, no LICENSE file); built on Qwen3.5-9B under Apache 2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-142026-09-21
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)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

GLM-5.3

A large coding and long-horizon agent model with a 1M-token context, several tool calls per turn and three reasoning budgets. Z.ai's smallest build is 756 GB in FP8, so it needs an 8-GPU server, Z.ai's API or a provider. The main risks are no published safety work, no way to report a flaw, and thinking that can't be turned off.

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

A 9B cousin tuned on MiMo-V2.6's agent work for coding, terminal tasks and visual coding, released as a base for RL research. It needs about 23 GB in BF16, since Xiaomi ships no smaller build. The main risks are no safety results while a seventh of its tuning is offensive security, and nobody at Xiaomi answering reports.

Before you call either

GLM-5.3

  1. Start it with vllm serve zai-org/GLM-5.3 --kv-cache-dtype fp8 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --speculative-config.method mtp --speculative-config.num_speculative_tokens 5 --tool-call-parser glm47 --reasoning-parser glm47 --enable-auto-tool-choice --served-model-name glm-5.3 (vLLM 0.28.0 or later, 8xH200 or 8xH20 per vLLM's recipe)
  2. Use the glm47 tool-call and reasoning parsers in vLLM or SGLang; SGLang's cookbook says glm45 leaves the calls as plain text
  3. Pass chat_template_kwargs: {"reasoning_effort": "low"} for short tasks; anything other than low or high falls back to max
  4. Pass clear_thinking: true in chat use, since the template keeps earlier reasoning by default
  5. Don't send enable_thinking: false; the template ignores it and always opens a think block
  6. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output is documented only for Z.ai's hosted API
  7. No Z.ai build fits a 128 GB machine; the full 1M context needs 8xB200 per vLLM's recipe

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

  1. Serve it as the card does, sglang serve --model-path XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B --reasoning-parser mimo, and add --tool-call-parser mimo for parsed tool calls
  2. SGLang's mimo reasoning parser expects thinking to be asked for, so pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true, as the card does, and read reasoning_content
  3. Calls come back as function and parameter blocks inside tool_call, the same shape vLLM's and SGLang's qwen3_coder parsers read
  4. The generation config samples at temperature 0.6, top_k 20 and top_p 0.95
  5. Images and video go in through Qwen3.5's processor; the template's audio tokens have no audio encoder behind them
  6. The MTP head isn't in the files, so skip MTP speculative decoding even though config.json lists a layer
  7. It's an SFT checkpoint meant for further RL, and discussions report runaway generation on llama.cpp, so cap max_tokens

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, GLM-5.3 or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B?

GLM-5.3 scores 64.6 (B) on agent readiness against MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B leads on reach and risk.

Other comparisons with GLM-5.3 or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

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