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

Laguna S 2.1 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

Laguna S 2.1 and MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 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 S 2.1 C

Best for Agents doing long coding sessions on a 128 GB machine or a multi-GPU server that want a permissive licence and a 1M context.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 75 against 70
  • Agent interface, 85 against 70

Watch for

No reply from Poolside to any of 34 discussions, many of them reports about thinking and tool calls

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B C

Best for Researchers and agents that want a small coding and terminal-agent model to fine-tune further, on a 24 GB GPU or larger.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 60 against 55

Watch for

Only BF16 from Xiaomi, about 23 GB to run

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLaguna S 2.1MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257570Laguna S 2.1 +5
Risk20%205560MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +5
Agent interface10%108570Laguna S 2.1 +15
Documentation and upkeep10%104140Laguna S 2.1 +1
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactLaguna S 2.1MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorPoolsideXiaomi (MiMo team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceOpenMDW-1.1MIT (metadata only, no LICENSE file); built on Qwen3.5-9B under Apache 2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-192026-09-21
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 reviews2.3/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Laguna S 2.1

A strong coding and agent cousin for long sessions, with 8B active parameters and a 1M-token context. At 4-bit it needs a 96 to 128 GB machine, tight on a 128 GB one. The main risks are that nobody at Poolside answers its many reports, there are no safety results, and a build card misdescribes its file.

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

A 9B cousin tuned on MiMo-V2.6's agent work for coding, terminal tasks and visual coding, released as a base for RL research. It needs about 23 GB in BF16, since Xiaomi ships no smaller build. The main risks are no safety results while a seventh of its tuning is offensive security, and nobody at Xiaomi answering reports.

Before you call either

Laguna S 2.1

  1. Quickest start is ollama run laguna-s-2.1, 96 GB for the default Q4_K_M, or the 66 GB nvfp4 tag on Apple Silicon
  2. On our reference machine try llama-server -hf poolside/Laguna-S-2.1-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 65536, from a llama.cpp release with the laguna architecture (b11772 has it). The 96 GB file leaves little room for context in 107.4 GB
  3. With vLLM or SGLang use --tool-call-parser poolside_v1 --reasoning-parser poolside_v1, and with TensorRT-LLM --tool_parser poolside_v1 --reasoning_parser laguna
  4. Thinking is on by default in the template, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false to turn it off, and keep reasoning_content from earlier turns
  5. The GGUFs ship set to 262,144 tokens. For 1M with llama.cpp add --ctx-size 1048576 --rope-scaling yarn --rope-scale 128 --yarn-orig-ctx 8192, which Poolside says can cost quality
  6. Sampling per the generation config is temperature 1.0 and top_k 20, and Poolside suggests temperature 0.7 and top_p 0.95 at 1M
  7. Expect occasional tool-schema slips in harnesses unlike Poolside's own, and validate JSON arguments, which Poolside lists as known limitations

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

  1. Serve it as the card does, sglang serve --model-path XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B --reasoning-parser mimo, and add --tool-call-parser mimo for parsed tool calls
  2. SGLang's mimo reasoning parser expects thinking to be asked for, so pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true, as the card does, and read reasoning_content
  3. Calls come back as function and parameter blocks inside tool_call, the same shape vLLM's and SGLang's qwen3_coder parsers read
  4. The generation config samples at temperature 0.6, top_k 20 and top_p 0.95
  5. Images and video go in through Qwen3.5's processor; the template's audio tokens have no audio encoder behind them
  6. The MTP head isn't in the files, so skip MTP speculative decoding even though config.json lists a layer
  7. It's an SFT checkpoint meant for further RL, and discussions report runaway generation on llama.cpp, so cap max_tokens

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Laguna S 2.1 or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B?

Laguna S 2.1 and MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B leads on risk.

Other comparisons with Laguna S 2.1 or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

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