Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 8B vs Ornith-1.5-9B
Granite 4.2 8B and Ornith-1.5-9B 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 4969 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 16 GB machine
Ahead on
- Risk, 55 against 50
- Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 31
Watch for
No safety results published for it
Best for Local coding and terminal agents on a laptop or a single consumer GPU, 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 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 8B +61
Granite 4.2 8B 92
Model card 17, Intended use (best for), limitations (ethical considerations and limitations), architecture, parameters (8B), context length (128K native) and 12 tested languages are on the card. Training data 20, IBM's disclosure file for the 8B lists the datasets used in pre-training and post-training as machine-readable metadata, and the card describes the three training stages. Last change 20, the last commit, on 20 October 2026, replaced model.safetensors.index.json (titled "granite-4.2 index file fix"), 21 days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 5 discussions that aren't pull requests (13 September to 5 November 2026), 4 have a reply from an ibm-granite member. Version policy 5, Granite 4.1 8B 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 + 20 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 92.
Ornith-1.5-9B 31
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 15, the newest change to the model's files was Ornith's NVFP4 build on 26 August 2026, 69 days ago, and no card of the model or its builds has changed since. Responsiveness 0, Ornith answered none of the 15 questions and reports. Version policy 0, the fourth safetensors shard and every GGUF file were replaced in place on 23 and 24 August with no note. File health 0, the card links a missing LICENSE and an unpublished Mobile build, and the two chat templates differ. 11 + 5 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 31.
Risk Granite 4.2 8B +5
Granite 4.2 8B 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-1.5-9B 50
File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and no Python in any of Ornith's repositories, 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 8B | Ornith-1.5-9B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 95 | 95 | even |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 50 | Granite 4.2 8B +5 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 92 | 31 | Granite 4.2 8B +61 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 8B | Ornith-1.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 2026-08-23 |
| 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) |
Verdicts
Granite 4.2 8B
IBM's mid-size reasoning cousin, with the same strengths as the 3B. It runs in every runtime we count from IBM's own builds on a 16 GB machine, 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-1.5-9B
A small coding and terminal-agent cousin with thinking on by default, XML tool calls that vLLM and SGLang parse, and 262,144 tokens of context. Ornith's own 4-bit builds run in under 8 GB in most local runtimes. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, no safety results, files replaced without a note and no replies.
Before you call either
Granite 4.2 8B
- Start it with
ollama run granite4.2:8b, orllama-server -hf ibm-granite/granite-4.2-8b-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-1.5-9B
- Start it with
ollama run ornith-1.5:9b, orllama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-9B-GGUFwith the Q4_K_M file - 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 with presence_penalty 1.5 for general tasks, per the card
- Pin a revision when you download, since Ornith has replaced files in place, and add mmproj-Ornith-1.5-9B-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 8B or Ornith-1.5-9B?
Granite 4.2 8B and Ornith-1.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C).
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-ornith-1-5-9b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/granite-4-2-8b.json·/api/v1/tools/ornith-1-5-9b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare granite-4-2-8b ornith-1-5-9b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "granite-4-2-8b", "b": "ornith-1-5-9b"}at/mcp, no key