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

Kronos vs Qwen3-Coder-Next

Qwen3-Coder-Next scores 57.6 (C) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in 2 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 41

Watch for

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

Qwen3-Coder-Next C

Best for Agents that want a local coding model for long tool-calling loops on a single 64 GB to 128 GB machine.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 55
  • Agent interface, 75 against 60

Watch for

No LICENSE file anywhere and a broken licence link on the card

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runKronosQwen3-Coder-NextEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255585Qwen3-Coder-Next +30
Risk20%205050even
Agent interface10%106075Qwen3-Coder-Next +15
Documentation and upkeep10%106141Kronos +20
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.2/100C 57.6/100

Facts side by side

FactKronosQwen3-Coder-Next
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorYu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua UniversityAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-04-132026-02-03
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.

Qwen3-Coder-Next

A fast coding cousin for agent harnesses, with 3B active parameters and tool calling trained across many scaffold formats for Claude Code, Cline or Qwen Code loops. Alibaba's 4-bit GGUF needs about 58 GB, fitting one 64 GB machine, and two providers host it. The main risk is neglect, with no change since February, no replies and no 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

Qwen3-Coder-Next

  1. Quickest start is ollama run qwen3-coder-next (Q4_K_M, 52 GB of files)
  2. On our reference machine Alibaba's Q8_0 GGUF (84.8 GB, about 102 GB in use) also fits, run with llama-server -m Qwen3-Coder-Next-Q8_0/Qwen3-Coder-Next-Q8_0-00001-of-00004.gguf --jinja -ngl 99 -fa on -c 131072
  3. Serve with vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-Next --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder (vLLM 0.15.0 or later), using the built-in parser rather than the repository's qwen3coder_tool_parser_vllm.py, which fails to import on newer vLLM per discussion 36
  4. The card's commands use tensor parallel 2 though the text says 4 GPUs, and it suggests cutting the context to 32,768 if the server fails to start
  5. There's no thinking mode, so don't pass enable_thinking or wait for reasoning_content
  6. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 40
  7. The GGUF card's llama.cpp example path omits the quant from the file name; the real files are named like Qwen3-Coder-Next-Q4_K_M-00001-of-00004.gguf
  8. Validate any JSON it returns, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Kronos or Qwen3-Coder-Next?

Qwen3-Coder-Next scores 57.6 (C) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Kronos leads on documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Kronos or Qwen3-Coder-Next

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