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

MiniMax-M3.1-Flash vs Muse Glimmer 30B

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against MiniMax-M3.1-Flash's 50.5 (D), and leads in 4 of 5 scored categories. MiniMax-M3.1-Flash leads on capability. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3260 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

MiniMax-M3.1-Flash D

Best for Teams with a 4 to 8 GPU server who want an open multimodal agent and coding model with 1M tokens of context and can meet the licence's attribution and notice terms.

Ahead on

  • Capability, 64 against 50

Watch for

No released vLLM or SGLang ran it on 24 October 2026; only llama.cpp b11861 from that day did

Muse Glimmer 30B BB

Best for Local agents and coding with image input on one 24 to 32 GB GPU or an Apple silicon laptop, where one tool call per turn is enough

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 40
  • Risk, 80 against 35
  • Agent interface, 75 against 70
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 41

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.8 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

One tool call per turn and no parallel calls

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMiniMax-M3.1-FlashMuse Glimmer 30BEdge
Capability35%356450MiniMax-M3.1-Flash +14
Reach25%254090Muse Glimmer 30B +50
Risk20%203580Muse Glimmer 30B +45
Agent interface10%107075Muse Glimmer 30B +5
Documentation and upkeep10%104165Muse Glimmer 30B +24
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 50.5/100BB 70/100

Facts side by side

FactMiniMax-M3.1-FlashMuse Glimmer 30B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorMiniMaxMeta
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMiniMax Community License (custom; commercial use needs a "Built with MiniMax M3.1-Flash" line and a one-time notice to MiniMax, and MiniMax's written authorisation above $20M yearly revenue)Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-232026-10-20
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 reviews2.3/5 (4)3.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

MiniMax-M3.1-Flash

A 428B mixture-of-experts model, 23B active, for agent work, coding and computer use, with image and video input, about 1M tokens of context and parallel tool calls. It needs a 4 to 8 GPU server for 250 GB of NVFP4 and MXFP8 weights, and vLLM and SGLang support was pre-release on 24 October 2026. Commercial use needs attribution and notice.

Muse Glimmer 30B

A dense 30B multimodal cousin for local agent and coding work with images, documented tool calls and adjustable reasoning. Meta's 17 GB GGUF fits a 24 GB card and runs in llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers. The main risks are one tool call per turn, no documented JSON output and a usage policy that adds limits to Apache 2.0.

Before you call either

MiniMax-M3.1-Flash

  1. Check the use case first; commercial products must show "Built with MiniMax M3.1-Flash" and notify MiniMax once, or get written authorisation above $20M yearly revenue
  2. On 8 H100 or H200 GPUs use vLLM's nightly image vllm/vllm-openai:minimax-m31-flash with --tensor-parallel-size 8 --block-size 128 --kv-cache-dtype fp8 --moe-backend marlin --max-model-len 262144
  3. Pass --reasoning-parser minimax_m3 --tool-call-parser minimax_m3 --enable-auto-tool-choice in vLLM, or minimax-m3 for both in SGLang with --trust-remote-code
  4. --block-size 128 is mandatory in vLLM, since MSA's sparse block size is 128
  5. Set effort per request with chat_template_kwargs reasoning_effort (low, medium, high, xhigh, max); sample at temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95
  6. On Blackwell or MI355X, 4 GPUs serve it with the DSpark draft from dspark/; vLLM's Hopper command leaves DSpark off and turns video input off
  7. For GGUF builds by others, use llama.cpp b11861 or later; earlier builds mis-scale the NVFP4 experts and produce garbage
  8. Without the hardware, call MiniMax-M3.1-Flash on MiniMax's API (minimax-api), whose thinking defaults to max effort

Muse Glimmer 30B

  1. Start it with llama serve -hf meta-models/Muse-Glimmer-30B-GGUF --hf-file Muse-Glimmer-30B-KQuant-17GB-Q4_K_M.gguf -ngl 99 -c 131072 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8080 --chat-template-kwargs '{"reasoning_strength":"high"}' on llama.cpp b10353 or later, or ollama run muse-glimmer on Ollama 0.32.7 or later
  2. In vLLM pass --tool-call-parser muse_glimmer --reasoning-parser muse_glimmer, in SGLang muse for both, in ExecuTorch --tool-parser atem. Without them tool calls come back as plain text
  3. Set reasoning per request with chat_template_kwargs.reasoning_strength (low, medium, high or xhigh). llama.cpp and ExecuTorch don't read reasoning_effort, and ExecuTorch rejects it with a 400
  4. Expect one tool call per turn and return each result before the next. ExecuTorch's server rejects tool_choice="required"
  5. Keep temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 64, don't run greedy, and never stop on <|eom|>
  6. Leave max_tokens room for reasoning, since in llama.cpp a request cut off mid-thought returns empty content with finish_reason length
  7. For images add Meta's 1.4 GB mmproj GGUF, which takes the build to about 22 GB with the runtime's fifth

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, MiniMax-M3.1-Flash or Muse Glimmer 30B?

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against MiniMax-M3.1-Flash's 50.5 (D), and leads in 4 of 5 scored categories. MiniMax-M3.1-Flash leads on capability.

Other comparisons with MiniMax-M3.1-Flash or Muse Glimmer 30B

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.