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

LBS-27B vs ZAYA1-8B

ZAYA1-8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against LBS-27B's 55.8 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. LBS-27B leads on agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

LBS-27B C

Best for Agents with about 96 GB of GPU memory that need to find click targets on dense professional screenshots, or read fine detail in large images, and can run a small crop loop and wait for independent results.

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 70 against 60

Watch for

No independent benchmark result yet; ScreenSpot-Pro, OS-World-G, PerceptionBench and HR-Bench numbers are inclusionAI's own runs

ZAYA1-8B C

Best for People who want a small, fast reasoning model for maths and code and can live without tool calling

Ahead on

  • Reach, 80 against 60
  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 50 against 43

Watch for

Tool calling needs a parser that only Zyphra's vLLM fork has

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach ZAYA1-8B +20

LBS-27B 60

Memory earns 10, since the only build is 54.73 GB of BF16, about 66 GB with a fifth added, which fits the reference machine but not 64 GB. Runtimes earn 25 from released vLLM, SGLang, Transformers and llama.cpp, which all carry Qwen3.8-27B's architecture, and Ollama through the llama.cpp release it pins, so 25. Builds earn 0, as inclusionAI publishes no quantised build and the GGUF copies are bartowski's and mradermacher's. Terms earn 15 for Apache 2.0 with nothing added, on the weights and on the base. Download earns 10, with no gate. Hosted earns 0, as no provider or inclusionAI API serves it.

ZAYA1-8B 80

Memory 30, the smallest build from Zyphra is the MXFP4-Experts repository, 5.85 GB, and 5.85 GB × 1.2 = 7.0 GB, within 16 GB. Runtimes 10, Released Transformers 5.22.2 has the zaya model and SGLang 0.5.23 has srt/models/zaya.py. Builds 15, Quantised builds from Zyphra at two precisions, FP8 and MXFP4 for the experts, each in its own repository. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata, an OSI licence with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the model and its builds on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and the card names no API. Zyphra's site lists a cloud product for its open models, which wasn't checked for this model. 30 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 80.

Agent interface LBS-27B +10

LBS-27B 70

The chat template earns 20, Qwen's Jinja file in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 10, as general tool calls rest on the inherited template and the crop action is parsed by inclusionAI's own code, not a runtime parser. Trained tool calling earns 20 for up to two crop actions per turn learned in GRPO. Structured output earns 0. Reasoning control earns 10, with reasoning effort documented and the reasoning shown as think text. Context earns 10 for 262,144 tokens with no scaling.

ZAYA1-8B 60

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (10,700 characters). Tool-calling format 10, only the template and a fork say it. Trained tool calling 10, the template takes tools and renders calls, and the card recommends settings for agent use, but it doesn't say the model was trained for tool calling or for several calls in a turn, so the lower band. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 10, the template has an enable_thinking switch, and the card names the qwen3 reasoning parser, which returns the reasoning apart from the answer. Context 10, 131,072 positions in config.json, for an architecture Zyphra trained end to end, so the config is the model's own. 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 60.

Documentation and upkeep ZAYA1-8B +7

LBS-27B 43

The model card earns 8, with intended use, one limitation and parameters, and no architecture, context, languages or cut-off. Training data earns 5 for a general description of synthetic GUI data with no cut-off. Last change earns 20 for 26 October 2026. Responsiveness earns 0, the one discussion unanswered. Version policy earns 5 for a first release. File health earns 5, as the config still sets an MTP layer the weights lack and the card names a reasoning setting the template refuses.

ZAYA1-8B 50

Model card 5, Intended use and the parameter counts are on the card. Training data 0, Nothing on the card about the training data. Last change 10, the main repository last changed on 26 June 2026 (the checkpoint reshaped for Transformers), 137 days before this check, and the quantised repositories on 2 July, 131 days. Responsiveness 20, Of the 16 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (7 May to 14 August 2026), 10 have a reply from a Zyphra member, which is most. Version policy 5, the original checkpoint is kept as ZAYA1-8B-legacy and the card says so at the top, without a date. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture after the reshape. 5 + 0 + 10 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 50.

Risk ZAYA1-8B +5

LBS-27B 50

File safety earns 15, safetensors only but with the documented route running the publisher's scripts to serve it and to write its system prompt. Provenance earns 15, inclusionAI's own organisation with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation and agent guidance earn 0, as nothing is published on either, prompt injection through screenshots included. Licence risk keeps all 15 under Apache 2.0. The security programme earns 5 for Ant Group's AntSRC, which isn't linked to the model.

ZAYA1-8B 55

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the Zyphra organisation, which the card ties to zyphra.com's blog post for the model (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on prompt injection, instruction priority or what the model refuses. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, threshold or change clause. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card, and www.zyphra.com has no security.txt. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLBS-27BZAYA1-8BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256080ZAYA1-8B +20
Risk20%205055ZAYA1-8B +5
Agent interface10%107060LBS-27B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%104350ZAYA1-8B +7
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.8/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactLBS-27BZAYA1-8B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorinclusionAI (Ant Group)Zyphra
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0 (the card's metadata and licence section; the LICENSE file sits in the GitHub repository inclusionAI/UI-Venus on its LBS branch, not in the Hugging Face repository)Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-262026-07-02
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

LBS-27B

A 27B Qwen3.8 fine-tune for GUI grounding that zooms into screenshots over a few turns before naming a point, and inclusionAI says it also helps with fine detail in large images. It needs about 96 GB at BF16 and a client that runs its crop actions. Every result so far is inclusionAI's own, with no safety results or injection guidance.

ZAYA1-8B

A small reasoning model trained from scratch by one lab, with a clean licence, 4-bit and FP8 builds and a team that answers questions. It's the hardest of the small models to run: its own architecture, a card that points at forks, and tool calling that needs a parser no release has. Little on limits, data or safety.

Before you call either

LBS-27B

  1. Serve with vllm serve inclusionAI/LBS-27B --tensor-parallel-size 4 --max-model-len 65536, which is what the card's wrapper script runs; keep the context at 32,768 or more for multi-turn images
  2. Build the system prompt with build_system_prompt from the LBS branch's zoomin_grounding_protocol.py, send the screenshot after image_path: <name>, and don't pass tools; the model answers in plain text
  3. Parse <action>crop_image(image_path=..., x1=..., y1=..., x2=..., y2=...)</action>, cut the crop yourself and return it with its mapping to the original image; allow at most two crops per turn and three per episode
  4. Read the final answer as [x.xx,y.yy] on a 0 to 1000 scale of the original image, and use your own executor to click
  5. Pass reasoning_effort as xhigh, medium or low only, since the template raises an error for high, and don't count on thinking_budget, which the template ignores
  6. Don't turn on MTP speculative decoding; the MTP weights aren't in the repository though config.json names one MTP layer

ZAYA1-8B

  1. Use it for reasoning, maths and code. Don't count on tool calling outside Zyphra's vLLM fork
  2. Run it with Transformers 5.22.2 or SGLang 0.5.23, which have the model built in
  3. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 in general, and temperature 0.6 for agent and code work
  4. Download Zyphra/ZAYA1-8B, not the legacy repository, for the released runtimes
  5. The quantised repositories have no licence tag. The main one is Apache 2.0

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, LBS-27B or ZAYA1-8B?

ZAYA1-8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against LBS-27B's 55.8 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. LBS-27B leads on agent interface.

Other comparisons with LBS-27B or ZAYA1-8B

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