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

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B vs ZAYA1-8B

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B and ZAYA1-8B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (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 35B-A3B C

Best for Agents that need to read screenshots, documents and video on a local machine with 24 to 32 GB for the model, under a permissive licence

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 80
  • Agent interface, 70 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 68 against 50

Watch for

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

ZAYA1-8B C

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

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

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.

Documentation and upkeep MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B +18

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B 68

Model card 8, it covers intended use, architecture and parameters but not limitations, context length, languages or a knowledge cut-off. Training data 0, none described. Last change 20, a commit on 3 November 2026. Responsiveness 20, OpenBMB answered 8 of 12 discussions. Version policy 10, earlier versions keep their repositories and the changes are dated and described. File health 10, the files agree. 8 + 0 + 20 + 20 + 10 + 10 = 68.

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.

Reach MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B +10

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B 90

Memory 25, since OpenBMB's IQ4_XS GGUF with its vision projector is 19.6 GB and needs about 23.6 GB with the fifth added, which fits 24 GB, while its Q4_K_M GGUF, 4-bit safetensors builds and Ollama entry need 32 GB. Runtimes 25, from vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.18.0 and later, llama.cpp's own MiniCPM-V 4.7 support and OpenBMB's entry on Ollama. Builds 15, OpenBMB publishes FP8, three 4-bit safetensors builds and GGUF. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, no inference provider is mapped. 25 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 90.

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 MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B +10

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B 70

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the card shows the tools array going in but not the call coming back, and names no parser. Trained tool calling 20, the template renders several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented or claimed. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking per request, off by default, with the trace between markers. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

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.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3BZAYA1-8BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259080MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B +10
Risk20%205555even
Agent interface10%107060MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%106850MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B +18
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactMiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3BZAYA1-8B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorOpenBMBZyphra
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-032026-07-02
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked

Verdicts

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B

A vision-language cousin for images and video that fits a 24 to 32 GB machine from OpenBMB's own GGUF, under plain Apache 2.0, with a publisher that answers. The card says little about limits, training data or how tool calls come back, so test the tool format in your runtime before relying on it.

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

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf openbmb/MiniCPM-V-4.7-35B-A3B-gguf:Q4_K_M --jinja, or ollama run openbmb/minicpm-v4.7:35b-a3b
  2. For image input in llama.cpp add mmproj-model-f16.gguf, or the 4x projector for more visual detail at a higher cost
  3. The GGUF files at the repository root have thinking off. Use the files in thinking/ when you want the trace
  4. With Transformers pass enable_thinking to apply_chat_template, and pass downsample_mode to both apply_chat_template and generate
  5. Use temperature 0.7, top_p 0.95 and top_k 100 in instruct mode, as the card recommends
  6. Check tool calls in your runtime first, since the card names no parser. The template uses the Qwen3.5 function-block format
  7. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

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, MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B or ZAYA1-8B?

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B and ZAYA1-8B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C).

Other comparisons with MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B or ZAYA1-8B

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