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

Kronos vs Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. 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.

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

Watch for

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

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B B

Best for Agents with a multi-GPU Blackwell or Hopper node, or using a hosted endpoint, that want NVIDIA's strongest open model for long agent runs

Ahead on

  • Risk, 70 against 50
  • Agent interface, 90 against 60

Watch for

The smallest build is 352 GB and needs at least four B200-class GPUs

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runKronosNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255555even
Risk20%205070Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +20
Agent interface10%106090Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +30
Documentation and upkeep10%106165Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +4
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.2/100B 68.8/100

Facts side by side

FactKronosNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorYu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua UniversityNVIDIA
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITOpenMDW-1.1
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-04-132026-06-04
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 reviewsnone2.8/5 (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 Ultra 550B A55B

NVIDIA's frontier-scale agent cousin with trained parallel tool calls, up to a 1M-token context and training against prompt injection through tool output. It needs at least four Blackwell GPUs for the 352 GB NVFP4 build, so most agents will use NVIDIA's API or a provider. The main risks are serving commands that run repository code and no published safety results.

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 Ultra 550B A55B

  1. It doesn't fit the 128 GB reference machine at any precision. Call NVIDIA's API (model nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b) or a provider instead
  2. With vLLM serve the NVFP4 build with --trust-remote-code --reasoning-parser nemotron_v3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder on 4 × B200 or more
  3. With SGLang use --reasoning-parser nemotron_3, not the BF16 card's nemotron_v3, which SGLang doesn't register
  4. On SGLang with tools, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true and force_nonempty_content true, as the card says, or reasoning and calls won't both parse
  5. Thinking is on by default. Pass enable_thinking: false for short tasks or medium_effort: true to cut reasoning tokens
  6. Use temperature=1.0 and top_p=0.95, as the generation config sets

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Kronos or Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories.

Other comparisons with Kronos or Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

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