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

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB vs SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview's 46.8 (D), and leads in every scored category. 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

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB C

Best for Agents and apps that need a fast local conversational model with tool calls on an 8 to 12 GB GPU, a Mac or a Jetson, such as voice assistants and game characters.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 40
  • Risk, 80 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 44

Watch for

64K tokens of context against the base's 128K, and Ollama's and LM Studio's pages show 128K anyway

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview D

Best for Researchers who want to study or fine-tune a looped transformer, more than agents that need a model to call today

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

Watch for

No released runtime runs it. vLLM and SGLang need unmerged pull requests

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.

Reach NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +50

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB 90

Memory earns 30, since NVIDIA's Q4_K_M GGUF is 6.18 GB, 7.4 GB with a fifth added. Runtimes earn the full 25 from released llama.cpp, vLLM, Transformers, SGLang, Ollama and LM Studio. Builds earn 10, as NVIDIA's only quantised build is the Q4_K_M GGUF and the DFlash repositories are drafters. Terms earn 10, because OpenMDW-1.1 is permissive with no threshold or use policy but isn't an OSI licence, and the Gemma 4 base adds plain Apache 2.0. Download earns 10, with no gate. Hosted earns 5, as NVIDIA's own API serves it.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview 40

Memory 15, the only build is the safetensors set, 38.14 GB with its MTP head, since the Hub counts 9.41B of its parameters in F32. Runtimes 0, none of the six runs it in a released version. Builds 0, SenseNova publishes one set of weights and no quantised build. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata and on the card, which links the LICENSE in the GitHub repository, and nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false 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 that serves it. 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 40.

Risk NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +30

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB 80

File safety earns 25, safetensors and GGUF only, and the documented routes run no repository code (an undocumented Inference Endpoints handler.py sits in the BF16 repository). Provenance earns 15, NVIDIA's linked organisation with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation earns 0, since NVIDIA names its content-safety and bias datasets but publishes no results. Agent guidance earns 15, for instruction-hierarchy training NVIDIA documents and a subcard on prompt injection and the safeguards to add. Licence risk keeps all 15 under OpenMDW-1.1 and Apache 2.0. The security programme earns 10 for the card's reporting route and NVIDIA's public bulletins.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview 50

File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, the files sit in the sensenova organisation, which the GitHub repository for the model links to (10), and the Hub gives a SHA-256 for the large files (5). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on instructions inside tool results or images. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with no use policy, no threshold and no right to change the terms. Security programme 5, SenseTime's about page gives a security contact (5). 15 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 50.

Agent interface NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +25

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB 85

The chat template earns 20, a Jinja file in the repository and the GGUF. The tool-calling format earns 25, with OpenAI-style tools, the gemma4 parser named and an asynchronous pattern documented. Trained tool calling earns 20, multi-step tool-use training and several calls per turn. Structured output earns 5, trained but with no instructions. Reasoning control earns 10, thinking per request, the reasoning returned apart and a budget. Context earns 5 for 64K, half the base's 128K.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview 60

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (7,756 characters). Tool-calling format 10, only the template says it: a tools block, and calls written as tool_call blocks with function and parameter tags. Trained tool calling 10, the card says the training recipes include tool trajectories and that the model is for agentic workflows. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 10, the card documents enable_thinking in the chat template call, on or off per request, and the template puts the reasoning in think tags ahead of the answer. Context 10, 262,144 tokens in training, per the card's specification table, and config.json gives the language model 262,144 positions. 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 60.

Documentation and upkeep NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +21

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB 65

The model card earns 20, all seven items with limitations in the linked subcard. Training data earns 15, the RL datasets published and a cut-off given, but the card's data section describes a larger SFT corpus the report says wasn't used, and the base's pre-training is described only in general. Last change earns 20 for 23 October 2026. Responsiveness earns 0, as NVIDIA hasn't answered either of the two discussions. Version policy earns 5 as a first release whose GGUF was replaced on release day with only a commit title. File health earns 5, since the card and the template disagree on the thinking default and both cards carry leftover lines.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview 44

Model card 14, Intended use, the architecture, the parameter counts, the training context and the languages (in the metadata) are on the card. Training data 5, one general sentence on the recipes, with no sources, sizes or cut-off. Last change 20, the last commit, on 2 November 2026, reworked the speculative decoding section of the card, 8 days before this check. Responsiveness 0, none of the 5 discussions that aren't pull requests (30 October to 9 November 2026) has a reply from a sensenova member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, A first release, labelled a preview, with dated news on the card. File health 0, the files contradict the card on precision. 14 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 0 = 44.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GBSenseNova-Loop-9B-PreviewEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259040NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +50
Risk20%208050NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +30
Agent interface10%108560NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +25
Documentation and upkeep10%106544NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +21
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100D 46.8/100

Facts side by side

FactNVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GBSenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNVIDIASenseTime (SenseNova)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceOpenMDW-1.1Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-232026-11-02
Terms last updatedno document linkednot read yet
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews4/5 (4)none

Verdicts

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

A small cousin for voice and device assistants, game characters and robot interfaces, trained for multi-turn tool calls, instruction hierarchy and short spoken replies, with thinking switchable per request. NVIDIA's Q4_K_M GGUF needs about 8 GB, and Ollama and LM Studio carry it. Context is 64K, half the Gemma 4 base, and NVIDIA publishes no safety results.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview

An unusual architecture under Apache 2.0, with a 256K training context, a thinking switch and tool calling in the template. It's a preview in practice too: no released runtime runs it, loading it runs the repository's code, the files are twice the size the card implies, and nobody from SenseNova has answered a question yet.

Before you call either

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

  1. Quickest start is ollama run nemotron-3.5-bolt:e4b, about 8 GB of files, and set num_ctx to 65536 or less, since NVIDIA supports 64K
  2. With NVIDIA's GGUF use llama-server -m Nemotron-3.5-Bolt-E4B-Q4_K_M.gguf -c 65536 -ngl 999 --jinja, and add --reasoning on --reasoning-budget <tokens> to cap thinking
  3. With vLLM 0.31.0 or later pass --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser gemma4 --reasoning-parser gemma4 and the repository's chat_template.jinja
  4. Pass enable_thinking explicitly in chat_template_kwargs, since the template defaults to off whatever the card says, and set skip_special_tokens false as the card's examples do
  5. Use temperature=1.0 and top_p=0.95 in both modes, as the card says
  6. Set conversational_mode true for spoken replies, which appends a brevity instruction to the system prompt
  7. Answer a slow tool at once with a pending tool message, then send the result later as a user message starting TOOL RESULT, as the card's asynchronous pattern says
  8. Keep persistent rules in the system prompt and send state updates as separate user or system messages in order, per the card's prompting guidelines

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview

  1. Read modeling_sensenova_loop.py before you load it. trust_remote_code runs it
  2. Pin transformers 5.18.0, the version the card checked
  3. Load with dtype=torch.bfloat16 as the card does, or the 38 GB of F32 weights stay at full size
  4. Pass enable_thinking=False to apply_chat_template for a direct answer
  5. Tool calls come back as tool_call blocks with function and parameter tags. Parse them yourself, since no runtime ships a parser
  6. Wait for the vLLM or SGLang pull request to land in a release before putting it behind an API

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB or SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview?

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview's 46.8 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB or SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview

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