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

Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B and Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.7 (C). Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning leads on reach, risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep. 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 80
  • Risk, 60 against 50
  • Agent interface, 90 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 43

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

Loads with trust_remote_code in every documented runtime command

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B C

Best for Agents on a 24 to 32 GB GPU or Mac that want Qwen3.8-27B's skills with shorter thinking, for teams under US$1M revenue or research.

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

Watch for

Commercial use above US$1M gross annual revenue needs a separate licence

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B ReasoningSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258580Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +5
Risk20%206050Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +10
Agent interface10%109060Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +30
Documentation and upkeep10%106543Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning +22
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 60.7/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactNemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B ReasoningSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNVIDIAUkisAI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceNVIDIA Open Model Agreement (custom, commercial use allowed, not an OSI licence)Swift Open License v1.0 (custom, not an OSI licence) on UkisAI's changes, free for commercial use below US$1M gross annual revenue with a separate Swift Enterprise License above it. Built on Qwen3.8-27B, whose Apache 2.0 still governs the base
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-242026-09-24
Terms last updated
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 reviews3/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

A Qwen3.8-27B cousin post-trained to think in fewer tokens, for coding and agent work with images in, that fits a 24 GB machine with UkisAI's own 4-bit builds. Commercial use is free only below US$1M revenue. The main risks are that nobody at UkisAI answers its discussions, and that the shorter thinking rests on UkisAI's own benchmarks.

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

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

  1. Quickest start is llama-server -hf ukisai/Swift-1.5-Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, about 18.4 GB with the vision projector
  2. On our reference machine BF16 fits, vllm serve ukisai/Swift-1.5-Qwen3.8-27b --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. The template is Qwen3.8-27B's, so chat_template_kwargs with reasoning_effort low, medium or xhigh (default) and enable_thinking false work as on the base
  4. UkisAI benchmarked it at temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 and presence_penalty 0, which is a reasonable starting point
  5. The MLX 4-bit build needs UkisAI's patched MLX-LM and has no image or video chat
  6. Check the licence before commercial use, it stops at US$1M gross annual revenue including affiliates
  7. MTP self-speculative decoding is available with the base's head, flags on the card

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B?

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B and Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.7 (C). Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning leads on reach, risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

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