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

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B vs Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct's 58 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. 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

  • Agent interface, 70 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 48 against 36

Watch for

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

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct C

Best for An agent with 24 GB or more to spare that wants a local reader of images, documents and video with 262,144 tokens of context

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

Watch for

No safety evaluation, agent-use guidance or security contact

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 +12

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-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct 36

The card misses limitations, languages and a cut-off (11). Training data is described only in the technical report, with no cut-off (5). The newest Hub commit is the library-tag commit of 26 November 2025 and the weights haven't changed since September 2025, so the qwen-vl-utils fix of 4 January 2026 in the code that runs it sets the line, within a year (5). Qwen answered none of the eight Hugging Face discussions that aren't pull requests (0), and GitHub issues weren't counted. Earlier versions kept in their own repositories without notes (5). Config, template and card agree and no broken-file report waits (10). 11 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 36.

Agent interface MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +10

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B 70

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, 7,249 characters. Tool-calling format 10, the card shows tools declared in the OpenAI tools array in a request to Transformers' server, but not how a call comes back, and names no parser for vLLM or SGLang. Trained tool calling 20, the template loops over tool_calls, so it renders several calls in one assistant turn, and the card gives a tool-calling request as a supported use. Structured output 0, Neither JSON nor JSON Schema output is documented or claimed for the model on the card. Reasoning control 10, the card passes enable_thinking per request in its examples, the template has been off by default since 19 October 2026, and the GGUF repository keeps thinking builds in their own folder. Context 10, 262,144 tokens, max_position_embeddings in the text config. 20 + 10 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 70.

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct 60

A Jinja chat template in the repository (20). The tool-call format lives only in the template, Hermes-style JSON in tool_call tags, and Alibaba names no parser (10). Trained for multimodal function calling, with several calls allowed in a turn (20). No documented structured output (0). No thinking mode in this edition, so reasoning control scores 0 by the rule. 262,144 tokens of native context (10).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMiniCPM-V 4.7 1BQwen3-VL-30B-A3B-InstructEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259595even
Risk20%205555even
Agent interface10%107060MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%104836MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B +12
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 58/100

Facts side by side

FactMiniCPM-V 4.7 1BQwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct
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 release2026-10-302025-11-01
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (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-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct

A vision-language mixture of experts for screenshots, documents, charts and video, with about 3B of its 31B parameters active. Alibaba's Q4_K_M GGUF with its vision file needs about 23 GB, it loads in Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Ollama under Apache 2.0, and three providers host it. No safety work is published, so add guardrails before it drives a GUI.

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-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf Qwen/Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 32768, or ollama run qwen3-vl:30b-a3b-instruct
  2. In Ollama the plain qwen3-vl:30b tag is the Thinking edition, so name 30b-a3b-instruct
  3. With the GGUF, load the mmproj vision file too, or images won't be read
  4. Parse tool calls as JSON inside <tool_call> tags, or use SGLang's --tool-call-parser qwen
  5. Use the shipped sampling, temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8 and top_k 20, from generation_config.json
  6. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  7. vLLM needs 0.11.0 or later, Transformers 4.57.0 or later and llama.cpp b6907 or later

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B or Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct?

MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct's 58 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories.

Other comparisons with MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B or Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct

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