Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 30B vs Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B
Granite 4.2 30B and Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Agents that want a documented, signed, Apache 2.0 reasoning model with tool calling on a 24 GB card
Ahead on
- Risk, 55 against 50
- Documentation and upkeep, 87 against 36
Watch for
No safety results published for it
Best for Local coding and terminal agents on a 24 to 32 GB GPU or a Mac, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No LICENSE file though the card links one, and no notice for the Apache 2.0 Qwen3.5 and Gemma 4 work it builds on
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 30B +51
Granite 4.2 30B 87
Model card 17, Intended use (best for), limitations (ethical considerations and limitations), architecture, parameters (30B), context length (128K native) and 12 tested languages are on the card. Training data 20, IBM's disclosure file for the 30B lists the datasets used in pre-training and post-training as machine-readable metadata, and the card describes the three training stages. Last change 15, the last commit to the repository was on 4 September 2026, 67 days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 4 discussions that aren't pull requests (28 August to 3 November 2026), 3 have a reply from an ibm-granite member. Version policy 5, Granite 4.1 30B stays in its own repository and 4.2 came out in new ones. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture, the 131,072-token context and the thinking switch. 17 + 20 + 15 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 87.
Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B 36
Model card 11, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters and context but not limitations, languages or a knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a description of the method with no data or cut-off. Last change 20, Ornith deleted configuration.json and a marker file from its FP8 build on 20 October 2026, 14 days ago, which this run counts as a change to the files. Responsiveness 0, Ornith answered none of the 36 questions and reports. Version policy 0, a weight shard, every GGUF file, an FP8 shard and the NVFP4 shards were replaced in place between 23 and 26 August with no note. File health 0, the card links a missing LICENSE, and the two chat templates differ. 11 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 36.
Risk Granite 4.2 30B +5
Granite 4.2 30B 55
File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, the files sit in the ibm-granite organisation, which IBM's Granite docs and the GitHub README link to (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, field-of-use limit, threshold or change clause, and the card's licence link resolves. Security programme 5, www.ibm.com/.well-known/security.txt names IBM PSIRT, read for the 3B listing on 4 November 2026 (5). 15 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 55.
Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B 50
File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and no Python in any of Ornith's repositories for this size, so the card's --trust-remote-code flag loads nothing from the repository. Provenance 15, the files come from the ornith-ai organisation Ornith's blog links to, with a SHA-256 for every weight file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either. Licence risk 10, MIT carries no policy, threshold or changeable terms, but the card's licence link is broken. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Granite 4.2 30B | Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 90 | 90 | even |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 50 | Granite 4.2 30B +5 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 87 | 36 | Granite 4.2 30B +51 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 30B | Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | IBM | Ornith |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-04 | 2026-08-23 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.3/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Granite 4.2 30B
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Granite 4.2 30B
IBM's largest reasoning cousin, with the same strengths as the 3B. It runs in every runtime we count from IBM's own builds on a 24 GB card, is signed, plain Apache 2.0, and comes with a disclosure of its training data. No safety results are published and structured output isn't documented.
Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B
A mid-size coding and terminal-agent cousin with about 3B active parameters, XML tool calls that vLLM and SGLang parse and 262,144 tokens of context. It runs in about 24 GB from Ornith's MLX 4-bit build or 32 GB from its GGUF. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, safety results or replies to 36 reports.
Before you call either
Granite 4.2 30B
- Start it with
ollama run granite4.2:30b, orllama-server -hf ibm-granite/granite-4.2-30b-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja - With vLLM 0.32.0 or later leave out
--reasoning-parser-plugin, since the parser is built in, and use--tool-call-parser qwen3_coder - Thinking is on by default. Pass
enable_thinkingfalse to turn it off orlow_efforttrue for short reasoning - The context is 131,072 tokens. The card's 512K extension isn't documented
- Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
- IBM recommends Granite Guardian beside it to flag risky inputs and outputs
Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B
- Start it with
ollama run ornith-1.5:35b, orllama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B-GGUF --port 8000 -c 262144as the card gives it - In vLLM pass
--enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_xml --reasoning-parser qwen3, and in SGLang--tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser qwen3, so tool calls and reasoning come back parsed - Thinking is on by default. Send
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingfalse for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention - Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
- Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 for general tasks and temperature 1.0 to reproduce the card's benchmarks
- Pin a revision when you download, since Ornith has replaced files in place, and add mmproj-Ornith-1.5-35B-BF16.gguf (0.9 GB) for image input in llama.cpp
- Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 30B or Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B?
Granite 4.2 30B and Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C).
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Machine-readable
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/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-ornith-1-5-35b-a3b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/granite-4-2-30b.json·/api/v1/tools/ornith-1-5-35b-a3b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare granite-4-2-30b ornith-1-5-35b-a3b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "granite-4-2-30b", "b": "ornith-1-5-35b-a3b"}at/mcp, no key