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

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores 62.7 (B) on agent readiness against MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B's 61 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B leads on reach 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 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 31

Watch for

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

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B B

Best for Agents with a 32 GB or larger machine that want a quick, permissively licensed coding and tool-calling cousin with vision.

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

Watch for

No safety evaluation, no agent-use guidance and no way to report a security flaw

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 +17

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.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 31

The model card earns 11, covering intended use, architecture, parameters and context but not limitations, languages or a cut-off. Training data earns 5 for a general description with no cut-off. The last change earns 5, a README edit on 24 April 2026, 192 days before this check, past 180 days and within a year, and Qwen's GitHub repository holds only a README and licence, so no reference code of Alibaba's changed later. Responsiveness earns 0, with no Qwen reply in the 40 most recent of 62 discussions that aren't pull requests, recounted on 2 November. Version policy earns 5, the earlier version kept in its own repository without a note. File health earns 5, the files agree but reports about tool calling and the template wait unanswered.

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.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 85

Memory earns 20 because the smallest 4-bit build from a runtime's own library is Ollama's Q4_K_M at 23 GB, which comes to 27.6 GB with the fifth added, so it needs a 32 GB machine rather than a 24 GB one. Runtimes earn the full 25, since released llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers all run the architecture. Builds earn 10 for Alibaba's one quantised build, FP8, with no 4-bit or GGUF from the publisher. Terms earn 15 for plain Apache 2.0, download earns 10 for ungated files, and hosted earns 5 because DeepInfra, Featherless AI and Scaleway serve it through Hugging Face.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMiniCPM-V 4.7 1BQwen3.6-35B-A3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259585MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +10
Risk20%205555even
Agent interface10%107070even
Documentation and upkeep10%104831MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +17
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100B 62.7/100

Facts side by side

FactMiniCPM-V 4.7 1BQwen3.6-35B-A3B
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 release2026-10-302026-04-16
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

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.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

A fast mixture-of-experts cousin with 3B active parameters for coding and tool calling, with image and video input, in every major runtime under plain Apache 2.0. Ollama's 4-bit build needs about 28 GB. The main risk is that nobody at Alibaba maintains it, with no safety results, no security contact and no replies to tool-calling reports.

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

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

  1. Start it with ollama run qwen3.6:35b (Q4_K_M, 23 to 24 GB on disk, about 28 GB in memory)
  2. On the reference machine use vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B --max-model-len 131072 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, BF16, since vLLM doesn't document FP8 compute on gfx1151
  3. Use the qwen3_coder tool-call parser and the qwen3 reasoning parser in vLLM 0.19.0 or SGLang 0.5.10 or later
  4. Thinking is on by default and /nothink isn't supported, so pass enable_thinking as false in chat_template_kwargs for short tasks, or preserve_thinking as true to keep earlier reasoning
  5. Card sampling for thinking is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20, presence_penalty 1.5, and for non-thinking temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8
  6. Keep at least 128K of context as the card advises, and turn on YaRN only beyond 262,144 tokens
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since the model card documents none

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores 62.7 (B) on agent readiness against MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B's 61 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B leads on reach and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

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