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

Muse Glimmer 30B vs Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning's 60.7 (C), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning leads on agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

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Which one, for what

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

  • Capability, 50 against 34
  • Reach, 90 against 85
  • Risk, 80 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.8 against 3.0 out of 5

Watch for

One tool call per turn and no parallel calls

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning C

Best for Agents with a 32 to 48 GB NVIDIA GPU that need one local model to read video, audio, documents and screens and call tools

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 90 against 75

Watch for

Loads with trust_remote_code in every documented runtime command

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMuse Glimmer 30BNemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B ReasoningEdge
Capability35%355034Muse Glimmer 30B +16
Reach25%259085Muse Glimmer 30B +5
Risk20%208060Muse Glimmer 30B +20
Agent interface10%107590Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +15
Documentation and upkeep10%106565even
Negative events≤1500
TotalBB 70/100C 60.7/100

Facts side by side

FactMuse Glimmer 30BNemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorMetaNVIDIA
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0NVIDIA Open Model Agreement (custom, commercial use allowed, not an OSI licence)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-202026-08-24
Terms last updatedno 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 reviews3.8/5 (4)3/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning

A local multimodal cousin for video with speech, long documents, charts, screens and English transcription, with tool calling, a reasoning switch and a 262,144-token context. It needs about 27 GB for NVIDIA's NVFP4 build on Blackwell, or 42 GB for FP8. The main risks are the remote code it loads and a repository where nobody answers questions.

Before you call either

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

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning

  1. Start it with vllm serve nvidia/Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-FP8 --max-model-len 131072 --trust-remote-code --reasoning-parser nemotron_v3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --kv-cache-dtype fp8 on vLLM 0.20.0 or later, after pip install "vllm[audio]" if any audio will be sent
  2. Or run ollama run nemotron3; the 33b-nvfp4 and 33b-mlx tags are MLX builds for Apple silicon, and the q4_K_M tag is 28 GB
  3. Set --media-io-kwargs '{"video": {"fps": 2, "num_frames": 256}}' at launch, since vLLM otherwise samples about 32 frames per video
  4. Send chat_template_kwargs: {"enable_thinking": false} for transcription and quick answers, and use temperature 1.0 with top_k 1 for ASR as the card recommends
  5. Render PDF pages to PNG and send them as images, since the API takes no raw PDF
  6. Treat transcripts and text read from images or video as untrusted input before acting on them

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Muse Glimmer 30B or Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning?

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning's 60.7 (C), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning leads on agent interface.

Other comparisons with Muse Glimmer 30B or Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning

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