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

Ling-3.0-tiny vs Qwen3.5-2B

Ling-3.0-tiny scores 55 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3.5-2B's 50.5 (D), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. Qwen3.5-2B 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

Ling-3.0-tiny C

Best for Agents on a laptop or small GPU that want a fast local model for tool calls and short reasoning, under MIT

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 80
  • Documentation and upkeep, 56 against 37

Watch for

No hosted provider today, and Ollama support is only an unmerged pull request

Qwen3.5-2B D

Best for Builders who want a cheap local helper or fine-tuning base for narrow tasks and image reading on a laptop, small GPU or CPU

Ahead on

  • Risk, 55 against 50

Watch for

No quantised build from Alibaba, and only one inference provider

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLing-3.0-tinyQwen3.5-2BEdge
Capability35%353128Ling-3.0-tiny +3
Reach25%259080Ling-3.0-tiny +10
Risk20%205055Qwen3.5-2B +5
Agent interface10%106060even
Documentation and upkeep10%105637Ling-3.0-tiny +19
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55/100D 50.5/100

Facts side by side

FactLing-3.0-tinyQwen3.5-2B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorinclusionAI (Ant Group)Alibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-312026-03-02
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno 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)3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Ling-3.0-tiny

A small, quick hybrid reasoning cousin for local agent work, tool calls and coding, under MIT. It runs in about 6 GB from inclusionAI's 4-bit GGUF in released Transformers, vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp, with no host. The main risks are a card that doesn't match the files in places, the vLLM route running repository code, and no model safety results.

Qwen3.5-2B

A small vision-language cousin for prototypes, fine-tuning and light local steps such as tool calls, tagging or reading an image, running in about 2 GB at 4 bits in every major runtime under plain Apache 2.0. Keep thinking off, since the card warns it loops. The main risk is neglect, with no safety results or answers from Alibaba since March.

Before you call either

Ling-3.0-tiny

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf inclusionAI/Ling-3.0-tiny-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 32768, which needs llama.cpp b11772 or a recent release with bailingmoe3
  2. With vLLM 0.32.0, vllm serve inclusionAI/Ling-3.0-tiny --trust-remote-code --enable-prefix-caching --mamba-cache-mode align --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser ling3 --reasoning-parser ling3, which runs the repository's config code
  3. With SGLang 0.5.22, its cookbook uses --reasoning-parser deepseek-r1 --tool-call-parser glm45 for this model, and drop the card's NEXTN flags since tiny has no MTP layer
  4. Thinking is on by default, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks
  5. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 20
  6. The template keeps earlier reasoning in the prompt, which grows long agent sessions
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented
  8. For a guardrail, inclusionAI's Ling-3.0-tiny-singprobe scores intent, unsafe output and hallucination per token, but only through SGLang and vLLM integration branches

Qwen3.5-2B

  1. Smallest start is ollama run qwen3.5:2b-q4_K_M (1.9 GB); plain qwen3.5:2b pulls the 2.7 GB Q8_0 build
  2. Full precision vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.5-2B --port 8000 --max-model-len 262144 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. Thinking is off by default; if you turn it on with "chat_template_kwargs": {"enable_thinking": true}, stream and cut off runaway output, since the card warns of thinking loops, and add --reasoning-parser qwen3 in vLLM or SGLang to split the reasoning out
  4. There's no generation_config.json, so pass the card's sampling yourself, for example temperature=1.0, top_p=1.0, top_k=20, presence_penalty=2.0 for text without thinking
  5. Use it for narrow steps or as a fine-tuning base, not as the main agent, as the card itself suggests
  6. Validate any JSON it returns, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ling-3.0-tiny or Qwen3.5-2B?

Ling-3.0-tiny scores 55 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3.5-2B's 50.5 (D), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. Qwen3.5-2B leads on risk.

Other comparisons with Ling-3.0-tiny or Qwen3.5-2B

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