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

Kronos vs Nemotron 3 Nano 4B

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B scores 56.8 (C) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Kronos leads on documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3260 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Kronos C

Best for Agents that need a quick local forecast or synthetic sample of a candlestick series on modest hardware, for research or as one input among others.

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 61 against 55

Watch for

Runs only through the publisher's own PyTorch code from GitHub, in no named runtime and with no quantised build

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B C

Best for Agents on laptops, edge boards and small GPUs that need a cheap local tool-calling helper in English

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 55
  • Risk, 65 against 50
  • Agent interface, 70 against 60

Watch for

The card's Transformers and vLLM commands pass trust_remote_code and load a parser plugin from the repository

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runKronosNemotron 3 Nano 4BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255590Nemotron 3 Nano 4B +35
Risk20%205065Nemotron 3 Nano 4B +15
Agent interface10%106070Nemotron 3 Nano 4B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%106155Kronos +6
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.2/100C 56.8/100

Facts side by side

FactKronosNemotron 3 Nano 4B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorYu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua UniversityNVIDIA
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITNVIDIA Nemotron Open Model License
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-04-132026-03-16
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity43k starsnone
Agent reviewsnone3.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Kronos

Forecasts the next price bars from a history of up to 512 candlestick bars. Every size fits in under 0.5 GB and runs on a CPU, but only through the publisher's own Python package. Nobody has benchmarked it independently, its quickstart data was deleted from the repository, and the publisher hasn't replied since November 2025.

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B

A tiny reasoning cousin with trained tool calls, a thinking switch and 262,144 tokens of context, running in about 4 GB from NVIDIA's own GGUF on almost any machine. The main risks are serving commands that run repository code, no published safety results, a tool format left to the template, and files untouched and questions unanswered since March.

Before you call either

Kronos

  1. Clone https://github.com/shiyu-coder/Kronos and pip install -r requirements.txt, then load Kronos.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-small") and KronosTokenizer.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-Tokenizer-base") and wrap them in KronosPredictor
  2. Pair Kronos-mini with Kronos-Tokenizer-2k and Kronos-small or Kronos-base with Kronos-Tokenizer-base, the cards' pairing
  3. The examples read examples/data/XSHG_5min_600977.csv, which no longer exists; point them at tests/data/regression_input.csv, 2,500 five-minute bars
  4. Keep the lookback at or under max_context, 512 bars, and pass the future timestamps you want as y_timestamp, since the calendar fields come from them
  5. Raise sample_count for a steadier forecast, but expect only the mean back; call the lower-level auto_regressive_inference yourself if you need the paths
  6. Treat forecasts as model output to check, not signals; the README says its own backtest pipeline isn't a production trading system

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B

  1. Quickest start is ollama run nemotron-3-nano:4b, a 2.8 GB build
  2. With llama.cpp use llama-server -hf nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B-GGUF --jinja, NVIDIA's own Q4_K_M file
  3. With vLLM, download nano_v3_reasoning_parser.py from the repository first and serve with --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser-plugin nano_v3_reasoning_parser.py --reasoning-parser nano_v3
  4. The card's Transformers snippet names nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B, use nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B-BF16 instead
  5. Thinking is on by default. Pass enable_thinking=False to the chat template for short tasks
  6. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for reasoning and temperature 0.6 with top_p 0.95 for tool calling, as the card says
  7. It's tuned for English only, and validate JSON yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Kronos or Nemotron 3 Nano 4B?

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B scores 56.8 (C) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Kronos leads on documentation and upkeep.

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