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

Laguna M.1 vs Spark-X2.6-4B

Spark-X2.6-4B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Laguna M.1's 55.5 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Laguna M.1 leads on risk and agent interface. 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
  • Agent interface, 85 against 70

Watch for

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

Spark-X2.6-4B C

Best for Agents that want a tiny local model for tool loops and long documents on a laptop, CPU or small GPU.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 41 against 36

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.5 out of 5

Watch for

No safety results and no agent or prompt-injection guidance

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLaguna M.1Spark-X2.6-4BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256585Spark-X2.6-4B +20
Risk20%205550Laguna M.1 +5
Agent interface10%108570Laguna M.1 +15
Documentation and upkeep10%103641Spark-X2.6-4B +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.5/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactLaguna M.1Spark-X2.6-4B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorPoolsideSparkLLM (XHToken)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-142026-10-20
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)3/5 (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.

Spark-X2.6-4B

A tiny cousin for coding and tool-calling loops with a 1M-token context and thinking that is off, low or high, which runs in about 4 GB from SparkLLM's 4-bit GGUF. Use llama.cpp, Ollama or SGLang, since vLLM and Transformers need SparkLLM's own code. The risks are no safety work or agent guidance and a thin, two-day-old card.

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

Spark-X2.6-4B

  1. Quickest start is llama-server -hf XHToken/Spark-X2.6-4B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, which needs llama.cpp b10828 or later, or ollama run SparkLLM/Spark-X2.6-4B (8.2 GB, Ollama 0.34.1 or later)
  2. For parsed tool calls serve it with SGLang 0.5.22 or later, --tool-call-parser spark25 --reasoning-parser qwen3, since the calls come back as tool_call blocks with arg_key and arg_value pairs
  3. Thinking is on by default. Pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false to turn it off, or reasoning_effort low for short thinking; the template raises an error on any effort other than high or low
  4. SparkLLM's recommended sampling is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k -1
  5. The template always opens with its own default system line, with the effort instruction, and puts your system message after the tool list
  6. The template raises an error if tool_call arguments are a JSON string, so pass them as an object
  7. Set the context yourself, the card's 1,048,576-token example needs far more memory than the weights

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Laguna M.1 or Spark-X2.6-4B?

Spark-X2.6-4B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Laguna M.1's 55.5 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Laguna M.1 leads on risk and agent interface.

Other comparisons with Laguna M.1 or Spark-X2.6-4B

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