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

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B vs Qwen3.5-9B

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B and Qwen3.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.5 (C). 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

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B C

Best for Agents that need a cheap local model to read screenshots, photos and short video on a phone, a laptop or beside a bigger model

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 85
  • Documentation and upkeep, 48 against 34

Watch for

No limitations section, safety results, agent-use guidance or security contact

Qwen3.5-9B C

Best for Agents that want a small multimodal tool-calling model on a laptop or a 16 GB GPU, under a plain licence

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No quantised build from Qwen itself

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.

Documentation and upkeep MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +14

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B 48

Model card 8, Intended use (image, multi-image and video understanding on device), architecture (early visual-token compression inside the vision encoder) and parameters (1B) are there. Training data 0, no description of the training data on the card. Last change 20, the last commit, on 30 October 2026, updated the card and removed an unused asset folder, eleven days before this check. Responsiveness 0, the repository has no discussions that aren't pull requests (two pull requests in all), so nobody has asked anything yet and the line reads as none answered, as settled in calibration. Version policy 10, MiniCPM-V 4.5 and 4.6 stay in their own repositories and the GitHub README dates each release. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture and the thinking switch, and no report waits without a reply, since there are no discussions. 8 + 0 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 48.

Qwen3.5-9B 34

Model card 14, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters, context and 201 languages but gives no limitations and no knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a general line about trillions of multimodal tokens with no cut-off. Last change 5, the files and card last changed on 2 March 2026 (c202236), 247 days before 4 November, within a year. Responsiveness 0, no Qwen member replied in any of the 40 most recent of the 45 discussions that aren't pull requests (2 March to 29 September 2026). Version policy 5, a first release that was never replaced in place, with no dated notes across generations. File health 5, two reports about the files and card (15 and 51) are still open with no reply. 14 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 34. The card's highlights mention sparse Mixture-of-Experts for the series while this 9B is dense, but its own overview matches config.json, so it's not counted as a contradiction.

Reach MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +10

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B 95

Memory 30, OpenBMB's own IQ4_XS GGUF is 0.64 GB, 1.54 GB with the 0.90 GB vision projector, and 1.54 GB × 1.2 = 1.9 GB, which fits 16 GB with room to spare. Runtimes 25, MiniCPMV4_7ForConditionalGeneration in vLLM's registry at v0.33.0, the minicpmv4_7 model type in SGLang's minicpmv.py at v0.5.23, the minicpmv4_7 model in Transformers at v5.22.2, a MiniCPM-V 4.7 guide and conversion code in llama.cpp at b12242, and an openbmb/minicpm-v4.7:1b tag in OpenBMB's namespace on Ollama, read as the 35B-A3B listing's is. Builds 15, OpenBMB publishes AWQ, GPTQ and int4 safetensors builds and a GGUF repository from IQ3_XS to F16, so quantised builds at two precisions or more. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata and as the LICENSE of OpenBMB's MiniCPM-V repository, an OSI licence. Download 10, gated is false on the main repository and on the GGUF, AWQ, GPTQ and int4 repositories, so the files download with no account or terms. Hosted 0, Hugging Face lists no inference provider for the model (an empty provider mapping on 10 November 2026), and no provider's own list was read. 30 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 95.

Qwen3.5-9B 85

Memory 30, Qwen publishes no quantised 9B, so the smallest 4-bit build from a runtime's own library is Ollama's qwen3.5:9b at 6.6 GB, about 7.9 GB with the fifth added, well under 16 GB. Runtimes 25, the cap, with vLLM listed in its stable docs, Transformers at released tags, llama.cpp, Ollama's library, LM Studio's own catalogue and SGLang all running the architecture. Builds 0, Qwen's FP8 and GPTQ repositories cover only the 27B and larger Qwen3.5 models, so every quantisation of the 9B is someone else's. Terms 15, plain Apache 2.0. Download 10, the repository isn't gated. Hosted 5, Together, Featherless AI, OVHcloud and DeepInfra are live for it on its Hugging Face page. 30 + 25 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 85.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMiniCPM-V 4.7 1BQwen3.5-9BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259585MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +10
Risk20%205555even
Agent interface10%107070even
Documentation and upkeep10%104834MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +14
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 60.5/100

Facts side by side

FactMiniCPM-V 4.7 1BQwen3.5-9B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorOpenBMBAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-302026-03-02
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (4)

Verdicts

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B

A vision-language cousin small enough for a phone, under plain Apache 2.0, that every runtime we count can load. The projector is bigger than the language model, so plan for about 2 GB. The card says nothing about limits or training data and doesn't show how a tool call comes back.

Qwen3.5-9B

A small dense vision-language model with trained tool calling, thinking that turns off per request and a 262,144-token context. Ollama's 4-bit build is 6.6 GB and the BF16 files 19.3 GB, and every major runtime loads it. The files haven't changed since 2 March 2026, Qwen answered none of the 40 latest discussions, and no safety results are published.

Before you call either

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf openbmb/MiniCPM-V-4.7-1B-gguf:Q4_K_M --jinja, or ollama run openbmb/minicpm-v4.7:1b
  2. For image input in llama.cpp add mmproj-model-f16.gguf, or the smaller 4x projector
  3. The GGUF files at the repository root have thinking off. Use the files in thinking/ when you want the trace
  4. Use temperature 0.7, top_p 0.95 and top_k 100 in instruct mode, as the card recommends
  5. Check tool calls in your runtime first, since the card names no parser
  6. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Qwen3.5-9B

  1. Smallest start is ollama run qwen3.5:9b (6.6 GB, q4_k_m)
  2. On vLLM run vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.5-9B --port 8000 --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, or tool calls come back as text
  3. Tool calls use the XML style <tool_call><function=name><parameter=x>, not Hermes JSON, so use the qwen3_coder parser and not hermes
  4. Thinking is on by default; pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, since /nothink isn't supported
  5. There's no generation_config.json, so pass sampling yourself, temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20, presence_penalty 1.5 when thinking, or 0.7, 0.8, 20, 1.5 without
  6. Keep at least 128K of context when thinking, and turn on YaRN only beyond 262,144 tokens
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B or Qwen3.5-9B?

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B and Qwen3.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.5 (C).

Other comparisons with MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B or Qwen3.5-9B

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