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

Laguna M.1 vs Ornith-1.5-397B

Ornith-1.5-397B scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Laguna M.1's 55.5 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Laguna M.1 leads on risk. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Laguna M.1 C

Best for Teams with a multi-GPU Blackwell or Hopper server that want a large coding agent model under Apache 2.0.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 55 against 50

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.5 against 2.0 out of 5

Watch for

The smallest build needs about 167 GB, more than a 128 GB machine

Ornith-1.5-397B C

Best for A self-hosted frontier-scale coding agent on an 8-GPU server, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required

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

Watch for

Needs about 290 GB of memory at 4 bits and about 970 GB in BF16, so it doesn't fit the reference machine

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLaguna M.1Ornith-1.5-397BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256565even
Risk20%205550Laguna M.1 +5
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%103636even
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.5/100C 59/100

Facts side by side

FactLaguna M.1Ornith-1.5-397B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorPoolsideOrnith
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-142026-08-23
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno 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
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)2/5 (4)

Verdicts

Laguna M.1

A large coding and agent cousin under plain Apache 2.0, for agents with a multi-GPU server. Its smallest build needs about 167 GB, more than a 128 GB machine, and no local runtime library packages it. The main risks are no upkeep since July, no hosted fallback shown today, no safety results, and repository code on the SGLang route.

Ornith-1.5-397B

Ornith's flagship coding and terminal-agent cousin, with XML tool calls that vLLM and SGLang parse and 262,144 tokens of context. It needs about 290 GB even at 4 bits, so a multi-GPU server, not the 128 GB reference machine. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, no safety results and files replaced without a note.

Before you call either

Laguna M.1

  1. Run the NVFP4 build on Blackwell GPUs with vllm serve poolside/Laguna-M.1-NVFP4 --tensor-parallel-size 2 --tool-call-parser poolside_v1 --reasoning-parser poolside_v1 --enable-auto-tool-choice, on vLLM 0.21.0 or later
  2. Thinking is off in the template unless you pass enable_thinking true or start the server with --default-chat-template-kwargs '{"enable_thinking": true}', which Poolside recommends for agentic coding
  3. Pass earlier reasoning back as reasoning_content in the history, since the card says reasoning may stop in later steps if it's dropped
  4. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0 and top_k 20
  5. The FP8 build's Docker image and serve.sh predate upstream support and set a 4,096-token context, so prefer a released vLLM
  6. It doesn't fit our 128 GB reference machine at any published precision
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented

Ornith-1.5-397B

  1. Start it with the card's vLLM command at --tensor-parallel-size 8, or ollama run ornith-1.5:397b on a machine with about 300 GB of memory
  2. 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
  3. Thinking is on by default. Send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  4. Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
  5. When downloading the NVFP4 build, fetch only the files its model.safetensors.index.json names (the 25-shard set, 241.7 GB), not the eight extra shards
  6. Pin a revision when you download, since Ornith has replaced files in place
  7. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Laguna M.1 or Ornith-1.5-397B?

Ornith-1.5-397B scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Laguna M.1's 55.5 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Laguna M.1 leads on risk.

Other comparisons with Laguna M.1 or Ornith-1.5-397B

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