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

Nanbeige4.2-3B vs Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B

Nanbeige4.2-3B and Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B leads on reach. 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

Nanbeige4.2-3B C

Best for Local agents that need tool calling and a long context on a laptop or a small GPU

Ahead on

  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 72 against 36

Watch for

Its own architecture: Transformers loads it only with the repository's code

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B C

Best for Local coding and terminal agents on a 24 to 32 GB GPU or a Mac, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 85

Watch for

No LICENSE file though the card links one, and no notice for the Apache 2.0 Qwen3.5 and Gemma 4 work it builds on

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 Nanbeige4.2-3B +36

Nanbeige4.2-3B 72

Model card 17, Intended use, limitations, the architecture, the parameters (3B outside the embeddings), the context and the languages (in the metadata) are on the card. Training data 5, A general description of how the fine-tuning and reinforcement learning data was built and filtered, with no sources, sizes or cut-off. Last change 15, the last commit, on 11 September 2026, updated modeling_nanbeige.py, 60 days before this check and within 90. Responsiveness 20, Of the 34 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (21 July to 10 September 2026), 20 have a reply from a Nanbeige member, which is most. Version policy 5, Nanbeige's earlier models (Nanbeige4-3B, 4.1-3B) stay in their own repositories, as the Base, FP8, 8-bit and DSpark builds of this one do. File health 10, Config, tokenizer config, template and card agree on the architecture and the 262,144 tokens. 17 + 5 + 15 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 72.

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B 36

Model card 11, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters and context but not limitations, languages or a knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a description of the method with no data or cut-off. Last change 20, Ornith deleted configuration.json and a marker file from its FP8 build on 20 October 2026, 14 days ago, which this run counts as a change to the files. Responsiveness 0, Ornith answered none of the 36 questions and reports. Version policy 0, a weight shard, every GGUF file, an FP8 shard and the NVFP4 shards were replaced in place between 23 and 26 August with no note. File health 0, the card links a missing LICENSE, and the two chat templates differ. 11 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 36.

Reach Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B +5

Nanbeige4.2-3B 85

Memory 30, the smallest build from Nanbeige is the FP8 repository (the 8-bit GPTQ one is the same size), 5.19 GB, and 5.19 GB × 1.2 = 6.2 GB, within 16 GB. bartowski's GGUF isn't read for this line. Runtimes 15, Released SGLang 0.5.23 has the model (srt/models/nanbeige.py) with its parsers, llama.cpp b12242 has the nanbeige architecture, and vLLM 0.33.0 names NanbeigeForCausalLM in its registry, served through its Transformers backend. Builds 15, Quantised builds from Nanbeige at two precisions, FP8 and 8-bit GPTQ, each in its own repository. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata, an OSI licence, with no use policy or other terms on the card. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the model and its FP8 and 8-bit repositories 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 no Nanbeige or BOSS Zhipin API for it was found. 30 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 85.

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B 90

Memory 25, since Ornith's own MLX 4-bit build is 19.5 GB and needs about 23.4 GB with the fifth added, which fits 24 GB, while its Q4_K_M GGUF, NVFP4 build and Ollama's build each need 32 GB. Runtimes 25, the most the line gives, from vLLM 0.19.1 (still in v0.33.0), SGLang 0.5.9, Transformers 5.8.1, llama.cpp's qwen35moe architecture, Ollama's library and LM Studio's catalogue for the qwen35moe architecture. Builds 15, Ornith publishes FP8, NVFP4, GGUF and MLX at several precisions. Terms 15, MIT as named in the card's metadata on 21 October 2026, with nothing added, read by its terms though the repository has no licence file. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, Ornith runs no API and no inference provider serves it. 25 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 90.

Risk Nanbeige4.2-3B +5

Nanbeige4.2-3B 55

File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, the files sit in the Nanbeige organisation (Nanbeige LLM Lab), which the lab's arXiv report for this model links, so the publisher's own account, although the Hub hasn't verified it (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions: the limitations section says outputs may be inaccurate, biased or harmful. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, no threshold and no clause letting the licensor change or revoke it. Security programme 5, BOSS Zhipin runs a security response centre for reporting flaws in its products, as read for the Nanbeige4.3-33B listing (5), though nothing links it to the model. 15 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 55.

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B 50

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and no Python in any of Ornith's repositories for this size, so the card's --trust-remote-code flag loads nothing from the repository. Provenance 15, the files come from the ornith-ai organisation Ornith's blog links to, with a SHA-256 for every weight file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either. Licence risk 10, MIT carries no policy, threshold or changeable terms, but the card's licence link is broken. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNanbeige4.2-3BOrnith-1.5-35B-A3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258590Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B +5
Risk20%205550Nanbeige4.2-3B +5
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%107236Nanbeige4.2-3B +36
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactNanbeige4.2-3BOrnith-1.5-35B-A3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNanbeige LLM Lab (BOSS Zhipin)Ornith
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0 (Hub metadata only; the repository has no LICENSE file)MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-09-112026-08-23
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Nanbeige4.2-3B

A small model built for agent work, with tool calling it was trained for, a thinking switch and a 256K context in about 5 GB, under Apache 2.0, from a lab that answers most questions. Its architecture is its own, so check your runtime: SGLang and llama.cpp have it, Transformers needs the repository's code, and Nanbeige ships no GGUF.

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B

A mid-size coding and terminal-agent cousin with about 3B active parameters, XML tool calls that vLLM and SGLang parse and 262,144 tokens of context. It runs in about 24 GB from Ornith's MLX 4-bit build or 32 GB from its GGUF. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, safety results or replies to 36 reports.

Before you call either

Nanbeige4.2-3B

  1. Serve it with SGLang 0.5.23 or later and pass --tool-call-parser nanbeige --reasoning-parser nanbeige
  2. Pass tools in the request. The card recommends tool_call_format="xml"
  3. Set preserve_thinking true for multi-turn tool use and coding, false for plain chat
  4. Use temperature 1.0 for agent and tool work and 0.6 for reasoning and chat, per the card
  5. For llama.cpp use b12242 or later. The GGUF files on the Hub are bartowski's, not Nanbeige's
  6. If you load it with Transformers, read modeling_nanbeige.py first: trust_remote_code runs it

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B

  1. Start it with ollama run ornith-1.5:35b, or llama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B-GGUF --port 8000 -c 262144 as the card gives it
  2. In vLLM pass --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_xml --reasoning-parser qwen3, and in SGLang --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser qwen3, so tool calls and reasoning come back parsed
  3. Thinking is on by default. Send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  4. Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
  5. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 for general tasks and temperature 1.0 to reproduce the card's benchmarks
  6. Pin a revision when you download, since Ornith has replaced files in place, and add mmproj-Ornith-1.5-35B-BF16.gguf (0.9 GB) for image input in llama.cpp
  7. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Nanbeige4.2-3B or Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B?

Nanbeige4.2-3B and Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Nanbeige4.2-3B or Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B

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.