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

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning vs Ripple-65B Preview

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning scores 61.2 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

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Which one, for what

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

  • Reach, 85 against 45
  • Risk, 60 against 55
  • Agent interface, 90 against 75
  • Documentation and upkeep, 70 against 49

Watch for

Loads with trust_remote_code in every documented runtime command

Ripple-65B Preview D

Best for Teams with Blackwell GPUs or a DGX Spark who want an Apache 2.0 coding model to try for terminal and agentic coding work, and can run the publisher's code to serve it.

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

Watch for

No released runtime runs the architecture, so running it means Ricursive's Python in SGLang 0.5.19 or Transformers' remote code

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 Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +40

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning 85

Memory earns 20 because the smallest 4-bit builds, Ollama's NVFP4 at 21 GB and NVIDIA's NVFP4 at 22.4 GB, need about 25 to 27 GB with the fifth added, which fits 32 GB but not 24. Runtimes reach the cap of 25 with released code in vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp and library entries in Ollama and LM Studio. NVIDIA's FP8 and NVFP4 builds give builds the full 15. The NVIDIA Open Model Agreement is a custom licence with free commercial use, so terms get 10. The ungated repositories give download the full 10, and NVIDIA's own API serving it gives hosted too its 5.

Ripple-65B Preview 45

Memory 10 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Ricursive's NVFP4 at 57.2 GB, 68.7 GB with a fifth added, which is over 64 GB and fits our reference machine. Runtimes 0, no released runtime runs the ricursive architecture with its own code; Ricursive's SGLang plugin and Transformers' remote code don't count. Builds 10, one quantised precision (NVFP4) from Ricursive. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, Ricursive serves no API, Hugging Face maps no provider, Together AI's page says coming soon, and GMI Cloud's and OpenRouter's pages weren't read.

Documentation and upkeep Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +21

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning 70

The card covers all seven fields, reading the 2019 to 2025 data collection period as the cut-off (20). Training data is listed with sources and sizes by dataset and one set is published (20). The Hub files last changed on 24 and 25 August 2026, and NVIDIA's TensorRT-LLM, which the card names for serving, changed the Nemotron-H model code on 14 October 2026, 20 days back (20). None of the 11 questions across the three repositories has a reply (0). It's a first release with no version policy stated (5). The shipped Jinja template and the tokenizer config's template differ, and reports about the template and a modeling file wait unanswered (5). 20 + 20 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 70.

Ripple-65B Preview 49

Model card 14 of 20, no limitations and no knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a general description with token counts and no cut-off. Last change 20, released today. Responsiveness 0, no discussions yet, read as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release, with the NVFP4 checkpoint replaced in place on release day under a commit note. File health 5, tokenizer_config.json carries a second, tool-less chat template and a 131,072-token limit against the card's 1M.

Agent interface Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +15

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning 90

A Jinja template ships in the repository (20). The card names the qwen3_coder parser and NVIDIA's cookbooks show tools declared with the OpenAI schema and tool_calls read back (25). The template renders several calls per turn and the card says it supports tool calling (20). JSON output is claimed with no word on how to ask for it (5). Thinking turns off per request, a budget caps it and the parser returns the reasoning apart (10). The context is 262,144 tokens, trained in (10).

Ripple-65B Preview 75

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Ricursive's server README says how tools are declared and calls come back, with the ripple parser in SGLang 0.5.19. Trained tool calling 20, one or more calls a turn and agentic-coding RL. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the template has no thinking switch or effort levels. Context 10, long-context training at 2M-token sequences for a stated 1M.

Risk Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +5

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning 60

File safety gets 15, safetensors only but loaded with trust_remote_code. Provenance gets 15 for files in NVIDIA's own organisation with a SHA-256 for every shard. The agreement has no use policy, threshold or change clause and the grant is irrevocable, so licence risk keeps 15. NVIDIA's PSIRT form on the card and its public bulletins give the security programme 10. Agent guidance gets 5 for general cautions, and safety evaluation scores 0 because the subcards name the safety tests without publishing results.

Ripple-65B Preview 55

File safety 15, safetensors only, less 10 because the documented way to run it loads Ricursive's Python. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation ricursive.com links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Ricursive's own FORTRESS and StrongREJECT results. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B ReasoningRipple-65B PreviewEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258545Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +40
Risk20%206055Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +5
Agent interface10%109075Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +15
Documentation and upkeep10%107049Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +21
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61.2/100D 53.3/100

Facts side by side

FactNemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B ReasoningRipple-65B Preview
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNVIDIARicursive Intelligence
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceNVIDIA Open Model Agreement (custom, commercial use allowed, not an OSI licence)Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-242026-11-04
Terms last updatedno date givennot read yet
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot read yet
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot read yet
Agent reviews3/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning

A local multimodal model 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.

Ripple-65B Preview

A dense 65B coding model from a new lab, pretrained from scratch and released today under Apache 2.0, that Ricursive says leads U.S. open-weight models on Terminal-Bench 2.1. Nobody has checked that yet, and the custom architecture runs only through Ricursive's own SGLang plugin on Blackwell GPUs, with a 57 GB NVFP4 build as the smallest.

Before you call either

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

Ripple-65B Preview

  1. Run Ricursive's launcher from inference/server with uv run --script serve.py on two B200 GPUs; it listens on 127.0.0.1:30000 with a 16K context by default
  2. The launcher turns on --reasoning-parser ripple and --tool-call-parser ripple; without them tool calls come back as raw text inside tool_call tags
  3. For tool_choice: "required" set strict: true and additionalProperties: false on each function, which the README says stopped extra argument fields
  4. Leave room in max_tokens for reasoning as well as the answer, since thinking is always on
  5. Use chat_template.jinja, not the template inside tokenizer_config.json, which has no tool support

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning or Ripple-65B Preview?

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning scores 61.2 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in every scored category.

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