Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B vs Ripple-65B Preview
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 69.3 (B) 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.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 3674 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Agents with a multi-GPU Blackwell or Hopper node, or using a hosted endpoint, that want NVIDIA's strongest open model for long agent runs
Ahead on
- Reach, 55 against 45
- Risk, 70 against 55
- Agent interface, 90 against 75
- Documentation and upkeep, 70 against 49
Watch for
The smallest build is 352 GB and needs at least four B200-class GPUs
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.
Documentation and upkeep Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +21
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 70
The model card earns 20, all seven items with limitations in the linked subcard. Training data earns 20, datasets listed with sources and token counts, cut-offs and filtering, and the corpora published. Last change earns 20, counting NVIDIA's own inference code for the model. The repositories last changed on 24 August, but NVIDIA's TensorRT-LLM, the runtime the card's own serving commands use, changed its Nemotron-H model code on 14 October, 18 days ago. Responsiveness earns 0, with no NVIDIA reply to any of nine questions. Version policy earns 5 as a first release. File health earns 5, since there is no LICENSE file, the BF16 card's SGLang command names a parser SGLang doesn't have, and tool-call reports wait without a reply.
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.
Risk Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +15
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 70
File safety earns 15, safetensors only but with 10 off because the documented commands pass trust-remote-code and the repository ships Python files. Provenance earns 15, files in NVIDIA's linked organisation with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation earns 0, since NVIDIA describes safety training but publishes no results. Agent guidance earns 15, as the technical report documents training the model to ignore instructions injected through tool output, beside the subcard's warnings and safeguards. Licence risk keeps all 15 under OpenMDW-1.1. The security programme earns 10 for the reporting route on the card and NVIDIA's public bulletins.
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.
Agent interface Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +15
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 90
The chat template earns 20, a Jinja file in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 25, since the card names the qwen3_coder parser and shows a tool call declared and read back. Trained tool calling earns 20, with tool-use training and several calls per turn in the template. Structured output earns 5, claimed from training with no instructions. Reasoning control earns 10, thinking off or medium effort per request with a runtime parser that returns the reasoning apart. Context earns 10 for up to 1M tokens.
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.
Reach Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +10
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B 55
Memory earns 0, because the smallest 4-bit build, NVIDIA's 352 GB NVFP4, needs about 423 GB with the fifth added, above the 256 GB band, and no runtime library has a local build. Runtimes earn 20 from released vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Transformers, with Ollama's cloud-only entry not counted. Builds earn 10 for the single NVFP4 build. Terms earn 10, because OpenMDW-1.1 is permissive with no threshold or use policy but isn't an OSI licence. Download earns 10, with no gate or account. Hosted earns 5, since NVIDIA's own API serves it and two providers host it.
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.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B | Ripple-65B Preview | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 55 | 45 | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +10 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 70 | 55 | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +15 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 90 | 75 | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +15 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 70 | 49 | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | B 69.3/100 | D 53.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B | Ripple-65B Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | NVIDIA | Ricursive Intelligence |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | OpenMDW-1.1 | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-06-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | not read yet |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |
How the scores have moved
Ripple-65B Preview
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B
NVIDIA's frontier-scale agent cousin with trained parallel tool calls, up to a 1M-token context and training against prompt injection through tool output. It needs at least four Blackwell GPUs for the 352 GB NVFP4 build, so most agents will use NVIDIA's API or a provider. The main risks are serving commands that run repository code and no published safety results.
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 Ultra 550B A55B
- It doesn't fit the 128 GB reference machine at any precision. Call NVIDIA's API (model nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b) or a provider instead
- With vLLM serve the NVFP4 build with
--trust-remote-code --reasoning-parser nemotron_v3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coderon 4 × B200 or more - With SGLang use
--reasoning-parser nemotron_3, not the BF16 card'snemotron_v3, which SGLang doesn't register - On SGLang with tools, pass
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingtrue andforce_nonempty_contenttrue, as the card says, or reasoning and calls won't both parse - Thinking is on by default. Pass
enable_thinking: falsefor short tasks ormedium_effort: trueto cut reasoning tokens - Use
temperature=1.0andtop_p=0.95, as the generation config sets
Ripple-65B Preview
- Run Ricursive's launcher from inference/server with
uv run --script serve.pyon two B200 GPUs; it listens on 127.0.0.1:30000 with a 16K context by default - The launcher turns on
--reasoning-parser rippleand--tool-call-parser ripple; without them tool calls come back as raw text inside tool_call tags - For
tool_choice: "required"setstrict: trueandadditionalProperties: falseon each function, which the README says stopped extra argument fields - Leave room in
max_tokensfor reasoning as well as the answer, since thinking is always on - 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 Ultra 550B A55B or Ripple-65B Preview?
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 69.3 (B) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in every scored category.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b-vs-ripple-65b-preview.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b.json·/api/v1/tools/ripple-65b-preview.json - From a terminal
anchor compare nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b ripple-65b-preview(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b", "b": "ripple-65b-preview"}at/mcp, no key