Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 3B vs Ornith-1.5-122B
Ornith-1.5-122B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Granite 4.2 3B's 59.8 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Granite 4.2 3B leads on reach, risk and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 4969 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Agents on small hardware that want a permissive reasoning model for tool calls and coding, with thinking they can switch off
Ahead on
- Reach, 95 against 75
- Risk, 55 against 50
- Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 36
Watch for
No safety results published for 4.2, and only general safety cautions
Best for Local coding and terminal agents on a 128 GB unified-memory machine or a 96 GB GPU setup, 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 3B +56
Granite 4.2 3B 92
The card covers everything but a knowledge cut-off (17). IBM's disclosure lists the datasets with sources and sizes (20). The index file changed on 20 October 2026, 15 days before this check, and nothing in IBM's 4.2 repositories or the GitHub repository changed since (20). The two questions asked on IBM's 3B repositories have an IBM reply, and no new thread was opened after 21 October (20). Granite 4.1 3B stays in its own repository with no note (5), and the files agree with each other (10).
Ornith-1.5-122B 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, a folder upload to the MLX builds on 24 October 2026, 17 days ago. Responsiveness 0, Ornith answered none of the 5 questions and reports. Version policy 0, the MLX builds were uploaded a second time four days after the first with no note. File health 0, the card links a missing LICENSE, states hardware its own files don't fit and names a variant that doesn't exist, and the two chat templates differ. 11 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 36.
Reach Granite 4.2 3B +20
Granite 4.2 3B 95
Memory earns the full 30, since IBM's 4-bit MLX build is 2.07 GB and Ollama's Q4_K_M build 2.2 GB, about 2.5 to 2.6 GB with the fifth added. Five named runtimes run the granite architecture in released versions or their own libraries, so runtimes take the cap of 25, though LM Studio has no 4.2 entry. IBM's FP8, FP4, GGUF and MLX builds earn 15. Apache 2.0 with nothing added gives terms 15 and the ungated repositories download 10. Hosted too is 0, since only DeepInfra serves it and watsonx.ai stops at 4.1.
Ornith-1.5-122B 75
Memory 10, since Ornith's own MLX 4-bit build is 69.7 GB and needs about 83.6 GB with the fifth added, over 64 GB and inside the reference machine's 107.4 GB, as do its Q4_K_M GGUF, its NVFP4 build and Ollama's build. Runtimes 25, the most the line gives, from vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2, llama.cpp's qwen35moe architecture, Ollama's library and LM Studio's catalogue for the qwen35moe architecture. Builds 15, Ornith publishes FP8, NVFP4, GGUF and MLX at several precisions. Terms 15, MIT as named in the card's metadata, with nothing added, read by its terms though the repository has no licence file. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, Ornith runs no API and no inference provider serves it. 10 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 75.
Risk Granite 4.2 3B +5
Granite 4.2 3B 55
File safety gets 15 of 25, safetensors only, less 10 because the card's vLLM command loads the repository's parser plugin. Provenance gets 15 for files in IBM's own organisation with hashes and a sigstore signature. Safety evaluation is 0, since 4.2 publishes no safety results. Agent guidance gets 5 for general cautions and the advice to add Granite Guardian. Apache 2.0 keeps licence risk at 15, and IBM's security.txt gives 5 of the security programme's 10.
Ornith-1.5-122B 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 3B | Ornith-1.5-122B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 95 | 75 | Granite 4.2 3B +20 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 50 | Granite 4.2 3B +5 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 92 | 36 | Granite 4.2 3B +56 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 59.8/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 3B | Ornith-1.5-122B |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 2026-10-20 | 2026-10-24 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (4) | none |
Verdicts
Granite 4.2 3B
A small reasoning model for tool calls, coding and multilingual chat, published by IBM under plain Apache 2.0 with signed files and a dataset disclosure, and run by llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers from a 2.2 GB Ollama build. Thinking turns off or shortens per request. It has no published safety results and no documented JSON mode.
Ornith-1.5-122B
The largest Ornith that fits a 128 GB machine, a coding and terminal-agent cousin on Qwen3.5-122B-A10B's architecture with XML tool calls and 262,144 tokens of context. Its 4-bit builds need 84 to 93 GB. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, safety results or replies, and a card that misstates the hardware.
Before you call either
Granite 4.2 3B
- Start it with
ollama run granite4.2:3b; set options.num_ctx in the request, since Ollama's default context is short and the model takes up to 131,072 - With vLLM 0.32.0 or later, serve
ibm-granite/granite-4.2-3bwith--reasoning-parser granite_thinking_parser --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --enable-auto-tool-choice; that release has the parser built in, so the card's--reasoning-parser-plugin ./granite_thinking_parser.pyisn't needed - With SGLang 0.5.18 or later,
--reasoning-parser auto --tool-call-parser autoresolve to IBM's recommended parsers, and the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content - Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for every mode, as IBM requires
- Pass
enable_thinkingfalse for direct answers orlow_efforttrue for short reasoning, through chat_template_kwargs on an OpenAI-compatible server - Earlier turns' thinking is stripped by default (
truncate_history_thinking), so pass it false to keep reasoning in multi-turn history - For JSON, use the runtime's guided decoding, since IBM documents no JSON mode for 4.2
- Verify the files with
python -m model_signing verify sigstoreand IBM's identity, per IBM's signature guide
Ornith-1.5-122B
- Start it with
ollama run ornith-1.5:122b-q4_K_M, orllama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-122B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 262144 - Budget about 92 GB for the Q4_K_M GGUF with a working context, and less context if the machine has under 100 GB for the model
- 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 coding and temperature 1.0 for general tasks, as the card recommends
- Add mmproj-Ornith-1.5-122B-BF16.gguf (0.9 GB) for image input in llama.cpp, and validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 3B or Ornith-1.5-122B?
Ornith-1.5-122B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Granite 4.2 3B's 59.8 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Granite 4.2 3B leads on reach, risk and documentation and upkeep.
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