Nemotron 3 Nano 4B vs ZAYA1-8B

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B 90

Memory earns the full 30, since NVIDIA's own 2.84 GB GGUF needs under 4 GB with the fifth added. Runtimes earn the full 25 from released llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang, Transformers, Ollama and LM Studio. Builds earn 15 for NVIDIA's FP8 and GGUF. Terms earn 10, since the Nemotron licence is custom even though it's free for commercial use with no threshold or use policy. Download earns 10, with no gate or account. Hosted earns 0, as no Hugging Face provider serves it and no NVIDIA hosting was found.

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.

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B 65

File safety earns 15, safetensors and GGUF only but with 10 off because the documented commands pass trust_remote_code and load a parser plugin from the repository. Provenance earns 15, files in NVIDIA's linked organisation with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation earns 0, no results. Agent guidance earns 10, subcards that name prompt injection and the safeguards to add, without an instruction hierarchy. Licence risk keeps all 15, since the switch to the Nemotron licence happened on release day. The security programme earns 10 for the reporting route on the card and NVIDIA's public bulletins.

ZAYA1-8B 55

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the Zyphra organisation, which the card ties to zyphra.com's blog post for the model (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on prompt injection, instruction priority or what the model refuses. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, threshold or change clause. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card, and www.zyphra.com has no security.txt. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B 70

The chat template earns 20, a Jinja file in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 10 of 25, as only the template shows the format and the parser name appears only in a serving command. Trained tool calling earns 20, with tool-use benchmarks and data and several calls per turn in the template. Structured output earns 0, not claimed or documented. Reasoning control earns 10, thinking off per request with a parser that returns the reasoning apart. Context earns 10 for 262,144 tokens.

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.

Nemotron 3 Nano 4B 55

The model card earns 20, all seven items with limitations in the linked subcard. Training data earns 20, datasets listed with sources and dates, crawled sets with token counts, a cut-off and published NVIDIA datasets, though most synthetic sizes are undisclosed. Last change earns 5, as the files last changed on 20 March 2026, and TensorRT-LLM's Nemotron-H commits since 14 October touch MoE, NVFP4 and Puzzle paths this dense model doesn't use, in release candidates or no release. Responsiveness earns 0, with no NVIDIA reply to any of six questions, re-counted on 4 November. Version policy earns 5 as a first release. File health earns 5, since the LICENSE file is empty, reports and fixes wait without a reply, and the card's Transformers snippet names a repository that isn't public.

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.