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

Laguna XS 2.1 vs Nanbeige4.3-33B

Laguna XS 2.1 and Nanbeige4.3-33B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Nanbeige4.3-33B leads on risk and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3341 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Laguna XS 2.1 C

Best for Agents that want a fast local coding model on a 32 GB GPU or Mac, with tool calling and a permissive licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 55

Watch for

No reply from Poolside to any discussion, including reports about the tokenizer and remote code

Nanbeige4.3-33B C

Best for Agents with about 96 GB of GPU memory, or the 128 GB reference machine, that want an Apache-tagged 33B model for long coding and tool loops and can wait for independent results.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 60 against 55
  • Documentation and upkeep, 56 against 46

Watch for

No independent benchmark result yet; every agentic number on the card is Nanbeige's own run

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLaguna XS 2.1Nanbeige4.3-33BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258555Laguna XS 2.1 +30
Risk20%205560Nanbeige4.3-33B +5
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%104656Nanbeige4.3-33B +10
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactLaguna XS 2.1Nanbeige4.3-33B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorPoolsideNanbeige LLM Lab (BOSS Zhipin)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceOpenMDW-1.1Apache-2.0 (Hub metadata only; the repository has no LICENSE file)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-192026-10-24
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 reviews2.8/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Laguna XS 2.1

A small coding and agent cousin with 3B active parameters, so it's quick on modest hardware. Poolside's 4-bit GGUF, also Ollama's default, needs about 24 GB, and every major runtime runs it. The main risks are that nobody at Poolside answers its discussions, there are no safety results, and the SGLang route runs repository code.

Nanbeige4.3-33B

A dense 33B Llama-architecture cousin for long agentic coding and office tasks, with per-request thinking, XML tool calls that stock vLLM and SGLang parse, and 512K of context. It needs about 96 GB at BF16, as Nanbeige ships no quantised build. Its agentic results so far are Nanbeige's own, with no safety results, training data notes or licence file.

Before you call either

Laguna XS 2.1

  1. Quickest start is ollama run laguna-xs-2.1, 20 GB of files, the same Q4_K_M as Poolside's GGUF
  2. On our reference machine use llama-server -hf poolside/Laguna-XS-2.1-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 131072, from a llama.cpp release with the laguna architecture (b11772 has it), or BF16 with vLLM (66.9 GB)
  3. With vLLM use --tool-call-parser poolside_v1 --reasoning-parser poolside_v1 --enable-auto-tool-choice, on a build with vllm-project/vllm#47311, or --tool-call-parser glm47 on older builds
  4. 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
  5. Pass earlier reasoning back as reasoning_content in the history, since the card says reasoning may stop in later steps if it's dropped
  6. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0 and top_k 20
  7. The card warns that Ollama on Apple Silicon may return empty output until llama.cpp#25389 ships
  8. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented

Nanbeige4.3-33B

  1. Serve with vllm serve Nanbeige/Nanbeige4.3-33B --enable-auto-tool-choice --reasoning-parser qwen3 --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, as the card says, or SGLang with the same two parsers
  2. Keep tool_call_format at its default xml, since qwen3_coder parses that format; the json option writes Hermes-style JSON calls, which need a different parser such as vLLM's hermes
  3. Pass chat_template_kwargs {"preserve_thinking": true} for multi-turn tool use and coding, and {"enable_thinking": false} to skip reasoning, as the card recommends
  4. Use temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and up to 65,536 new tokens for agent work, and temperature 0.6 for reasoning and chat, per the card
  5. Send your own system prompt, since without one the template injects a Chinese identity line, or a Chinese tool-expert prompt when tools are passed
  6. Send one system message at the start only, as the template raises an error for a later one
  7. In plain Transformers pass use_cache=True to generate, since config.json and generation_config.json set it false; trust_remote_code isn't needed

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Laguna XS 2.1 or Nanbeige4.3-33B?

Laguna XS 2.1 and Nanbeige4.3-33B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Nanbeige4.3-33B leads on risk and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Laguna XS 2.1 or Nanbeige4.3-33B

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