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

Kolibri-1 vs LongCat-2.5

Kolibri-1 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against LongCat-2.5's 50.5 (D), and leads in every scored category. 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

Kolibri-1 C

Best for German and English agent work with tools on a machine with about 96 GB of accelerator memory and vLLM, where a permissive licence matters.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 65 against 35
  • Risk, 65 against 60
  • Agent interface, 90 against 75
  • Documentation and upkeep, 70 against 46

Watch for

The smallest publisher build is FP8 at 78.8 GB, so it needs about 95 GB and won't fit a 64 GB machine

LongCat-2.5 D

Best for Operators with NPU clusters, and anyone tracking what the open flagships can do

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

3,562 GB in BF16 and 1,336 GB at 4 bits

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 Kolibri-1 +30

Kolibri-1 65

Memory earns 10 because the smallest qualifying build is Aleph Alpha's own FP8 one at 78.8 GB, which comes to 94.6 GB with the fifth added and so fits only the reference machine's band. There is no publisher 4-bit or GGUF build and no Ollama library entry to bring it lower. Runtimes earn 20, for released Transformers 5.20.0, released llama.cpp builds from b11709, Ollama 0.40.14, which builds llama.cpp b11963 with kolibri1, and vLLM, through Aleph Alpha's plugin for 0.29 and natively in 0.33.0 through its Transformers backend. LM Studio's latest runtime predates kolibri1 and SGLang 0.5.23 has no model file. Builds earn 10 for the one FP8 quantisation beside BF16. Terms earn 15 for Apache 2.0 with no use policy. Download earns 10 because neither repository is gated. Hosted earns 0, since no inference provider is listed on the Hub and Aleph Alpha names no API serving it.

LongCat-2.5 35

Memory 0, the smallest build is Meituan's W4A4 repository, 1,336 GB, and 1,336 GB × 1.2 = 1,603 GB, far above 256 GB. The BF16 files are 3,562 GB. Runtimes 0, none of the six runs it in a released version: vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2 and llama.cpp b12242 have no LongcatCausalLM or pro_v code, and the model code config.json names isn't in the repository. Builds 10, one quantised build from Meituan, the W4A4 repository (4-bit experts, 1,336 GB). Terms 15, MIT in the metadata, the LICENSE file and the card, with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for both repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it. 0 + 0 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 35.

Documentation and upkeep Kolibri-1 +24

Kolibri-1 70

The model card earns 20 with all seven items. Training data earns 15 for a data card with the mix, the filtering and the cut-off, short of a dataset list with sizes. The last change earns 20, for template and card commits on 20 October 2026. Responsiveness earns 5, since Aleph Alpha replied in 2 of 14 discussions across both repositories and none since 13 October. Version policy earns 5 for a first release. File health earns 5, because the files agree but a report of a broken tool-call parser in the publisher's container image has waited since 7 October without a reply.

LongCat-2.5 46

Model card 11, Intended use, limitations (the usage considerations), the architecture and the parameter counts are on the card. Training data 5, A general description of the training stages and where the reinforcement learning tasks came from, with no sources, sizes or cut-off. Last change 20, the last commit, on 10 November 2026, updated the card, on the day of this check. Responsiveness 0, Neither of the 2 discussions that aren't pull requests (9 and 10 November 2026) has a reply from a meituan-longcat member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, LongCat-2.0 stays in its own repositories and 2.5 came out in new ones, with no dated note on the older ones that we read. File health 5, the template is in both places and agrees, but config.json's auto_map names configuration_longcat_oe and modeling_longcat_oe, which aren't in the repository, and the tokenizer config's 131,072-token length is a quarter of the config's 524,288 positions. 11 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 46.

Agent interface Kolibri-1 +15

Kolibri-1 90

The chat template earns 20 as Jinja in tokenizer_config.json. The tool-calling format earns 25, because the card documents how tools are declared and how calls come back and names the kolibri1 parser for vLLM with a full example. Trained tool calling earns 20, from training on tool environments and a template built for several calls in one turn. Structured output earns 5, since the card claims it without saying how to ask. Reasoning control earns 10 for effort levels and an off switch per request, with the reasoning returned in a separate field. Context earns 10 for 262,144 tokens trained.

LongCat-2.5 75

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (11,823 characters), with a copy in tokenizer_config.json. Tool-calling format 25, the card documents how tools are declared (the OpenAI function format) and how calls come back (tool_calls with an id, a name and JSON arguments, answered by a tool message), in a worked example against an OpenAI-compatible server. Trained tool calling 10, the card describes reinforcement learning on long agentic tasks and shows one tool call in a turn. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking on or off per request through chat_template_kwargs, with the reasoning returned as reasoning_content, both shown on the card. Context 10, the card states no context length, but config.json gives 524,288 positions and the card's own evaluations ran at 512K and 1M sequence lengths after what it calls long-context training, so 128K or more is taken as trained. 20 + 25 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 75.

Risk Kolibri-1 +5

Kolibri-1 65

File safety earns 25 for safetensors only, with no repository code run on load. Provenance earns 15, for the Aleph-Alpha organisation the launch post links and a SHA-256 for every weight shard. Safety evaluation earns 0, because the card says refusals were measured and neither the card nor the technical report publishes results. Agent guidance earns 10, since the card says what the trained refusals cover and which safeguards to add around the model, without prompt-injection guidance. Licence risk earns the full 15 under unchanged Apache 2.0. The security programme earns 0, as no contact, policy or advisories were found and security.txt answered 403 on 3 November, so it is scored as absent and left open.

LongCat-2.5 60

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the meituan-longcat organisation, the name of Meituan's GitHub organisation that the card links for deployment, and the card's licence names Meituan (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions under Usage Considerations: not evaluated for every use, assess accuracy, safety and fairness before sensitive use, and follow the law. Licence risk 15, MIT with no use policy, no threshold and no right to change the terms. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card beyond a general contact, and Meituan's own security pages weren't looked up, so this scores as absent and is an open question. 25 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 0 = 60.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runKolibri-1LongCat-2.5Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256535Kolibri-1 +30
Risk20%206560Kolibri-1 +5
Agent interface10%109075Kolibri-1 +15
Documentation and upkeep10%107046Kolibri-1 +24
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100D 50.5/100

Facts side by side

FactKolibri-1LongCat-2.5
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorAleph AlphaMeituan (LongCat)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-192026-11-10
Terms last updatedno document linkednot read yet
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews3.3/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Kolibri-1

Kolibri-1 is a German and English reasoning model with a documented tool-call format, switchable thinking and a 262,144-token context, under Apache 2.0. Aleph Alpha's FP8 build needs about 95 GB and runs on vLLM and Transformers 5.20; llama.cpp and Ollama 0.40.14 need a GGUF. The main risk is no published safety results or security contact, and few repository answers.

LongCat-2.5

Meituan's flagship is MIT-licensed and documented for tool calling and switchable reasoning, with strong numbers of its own on agentic coding. Almost nobody can run it: 3,562 GB of weights, a 1,336 GB 4-bit build for NPU accelerators, and no released runtime with its architecture. A model to watch until a runtime or a provider picks it up.

Before you call either

Kolibri-1

  1. Start it with pip install 'aleph-alpha-inference>=1' then vllm serve Aleph-Alpha/Kolibri-1 --kv-cache-dtype fp8 --reasoning-parser kolibri1 --tool-call-parser kolibri1 --enable-auto-tool-choice
  2. Without the kolibri1 tool-call parser and enable-auto-tool-choice, tool calls come back as text in tool_call tags
  3. The plugin supports one vLLM minor version, 0.29. vLLM 0.33.0 loads the model without it, but has no kolibri1 tool or reasoning parser
  4. Thinking is on by default at high effort. Pass reasoning_effort none or enable_thinking false in chat_template_kwargs for short tasks
  5. Recommended sampling is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.97 and top_k 128
  6. Past 262,144 tokens, add --max-model-len 1048576 and the max_position_embeddings override in --hf-overrides, though Aleph Alpha recommends staying at or below 262,144
  7. With Transformers 5.20 or later, tokenizer.parse_response returns the answer in content and the reasoning in thinking
  8. On the reference machine the FP8 build fits by size, but no document confirms vLLM runs FP8 on gfx1151, and Aleph Alpha ships no GGUF for llama.cpp or Ollama
  9. Validate tool results in your own code, as the card asks

LongCat-2.5

  1. You can't run this on a workstation or a single GPU server. Plan for a provider, and none serves it yet
  2. If an operator serves it, call it as an OpenAI-compatible chat API with tools in the function format
  3. Pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true or false
  4. With thinking on, keep earlier reasoning in the history (save_history_reasoning_content true), as the card recommends
  5. The card's results use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95
  6. Its benchmark table is Meituan's own. The unmarked scores are in-house

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Kolibri-1 or LongCat-2.5?

Kolibri-1 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against LongCat-2.5's 50.5 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Kolibri-1 or LongCat-2.5

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