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

Kimi K3 vs Ornith-1.5-122B

Kimi K3 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Ornith-1.5-122B's 61 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ornith-1.5-122B leads on reach and agent interface. 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

Kimi K3 B

Best for Teams with a multi-node GPU cluster who want an open 1M-context agent model for long coding and research work

Ahead on

  • Risk, 65 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 41 against 36

Watch for

1,561 GB of files at its smallest publisher build, far beyond any single machine

Ornith-1.5-122B C

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

Ahead on

  • Reach, 75 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 against 65

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.

Reach Ornith-1.5-122B +25

Kimi K3 50

Memory earns nothing, because the only build of 4-bit precision or better from Moonshot or a runtime's own library is Moonshot's MXFP4 release of 1,561 GB, about 1,873 GB with the fifth added, far above 256 GB. Ollama and LM Studio list it only as a cloud model. Runtimes earn 15, for model code in released vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp; Transformers has no kimi_k3 code of its own and loads Moonshot's remote code, so it doesn't count. Builds earn 10 for one publisher precision, the MXFP4 files the model was trained for. Terms earn 10, a custom MIT-based licence that is free for commercial use below a revenue threshold. Download earns 10, with no gate and no account. Hosted earns 5, since Moonshot's API serves it and five inference providers are live for it on Hugging Face.

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.

Agent interface Ornith-1.5-122B +20

Kimi K3 65

The chat template earns 10, because there is no Jinja template and the prompt format exists only as encoding_k3.py, code you run. The tool-calling format earns 10, since Moonshot documents the tools channel but the parser name comes only from vLLM's and SGLang's own recipes. Trained tool calling earns 20 for indexed parallel calls in one turn. Structured output earns 5, as the card names it among its linked guides without saying how to ask the weights for it, and the how sits in hosted-API docs. Reasoning control earns 10, with per-request effort documented on the card and reasoning returned as reasoning_content. Context earns 10 for 1,048,576 tokens trained in.

Ornith-1.5-122B 85

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, the card shows how tools go in and how calls come back and names the parser for vLLM and SGLang. Trained tool calling 20, Ornith trains it on agent tasks and the template renders several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented or claimed. Reasoning control 10, Ornith's template reads enable_thinking per request and the card says the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content, though the card doesn't name the switch. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

Risk Kimi K3 +15

Kimi K3 65

File safety earns 15, safetensors only with no pickle files, less 10 because the documented loading path runs Moonshot's Python with trust_remote_code and builds prompts with encoding_k3.py. Provenance earns the full 15, files in the organisation Moonshot links to with a SHA-256 for every shard. Safety evaluation earns 20 for the cyber assessment the UK AI Security Institute and CAISI ran and published, which found its safeguards didn't stop exploit development. Agent guidance earns 5 for the blog's general cautions about proactiveness and passing back thinking. Licence risk earns 10, losing 5 for the model-as-a-service revenue threshold and nothing else. The security programme earns nothing, with no security.txt, disclosure policy, SECURITY.md or public advisories found.

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.

Documentation and upkeep Kimi K3 +5

Kimi K3 41

The model card earns 11, covering intended use, architecture, parameters and context, but not limitations, languages or a knowledge cut-off. Training data earns 5 for a general description with no cut-off. The last change earns 15, an encoding_k3.py update on 20 August, 74 days before 2 November and within 90; the GitHub repository's last commit is 6 August. Responsiveness earns nothing, with no Moonshot reply in the 40 most recent discussions. Version policy earns 5 for a first release. File health earns 5, because a report that the tokeniser goes past the declared vocabulary waits without a reply.

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.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runKimi K3Ornith-1.5-122BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255075Ornith-1.5-122B +25
Risk20%206550Kimi K3 +15
Agent interface10%106585Ornith-1.5-122B +20
Documentation and upkeep10%104136Kimi K3 +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 62.4/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactKimi K3Ornith-1.5-122B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorMoonshot AIOrnith
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceKimi K3 License (modified MIT)MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-09-022026-10-24
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Kimi K3

Kimi K3 is a 2.8T multimodal agent model with a 1M-token context, parallel tool calls and per-request effort, for long coding and research sessions. Its 1,561 GB of files need a multi-node GPU cluster, so most agents will call a hosted copy. The main risks are Moonshot's Python running at load and prompt time, and no answers in its repository.

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

Kimi K3

  1. Start it with SGLang on a node of 8 B300s, sglang serve --trust-remote-code --model-path moonshotai/Kimi-K3 --tp-size 8 --context-length 65536 --mem-fraction-static 0.82 --reasoning-parser kimi_k3 --tool-call-parser kimi_k3 --port 30000
  2. Use the kimi_k3 tool-call and reasoning parsers in vLLM or SGLang, and validate tool-call arguments against the schema, since vLLM's recipe says K3 sometimes emits a format its parser doesn't expect
  3. Pass the whole assistant message back every turn, reasoning_content and tool_calls included, or output becomes unstable
  4. Thinking is always on; set reasoning_effort to low or high when max is too slow
  5. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, with top-p 0.95 for single-step tasks and 1.0 for agentic ones
  6. Don't hand an ongoing session from another model to K3, and state boundaries in the system prompt, since Moonshot warns it can act on its own when intent is unclear
  7. Without the hardware, call it through Moonshot's API or an inference provider listed on its Hugging Face page

Ornith-1.5-122B

  1. Start it with ollama run ornith-1.5:122b-q4_K_M, or llama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-122B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 262144
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. Thinking is on by default. Send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  5. Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
  6. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 for coding and temperature 1.0 for general tasks, as the card recommends
  7. 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, Kimi K3 or Ornith-1.5-122B?

Kimi K3 scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Ornith-1.5-122B's 61 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ornith-1.5-122B leads on reach and agent interface.

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