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

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next's 52.3 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B B

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

  • Risk, 70 against 45
  • Agent interface, 90 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 40

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 1.8 out of 5

Watch for

The smallest build is 352 GB and needs at least four B200-class GPUs

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next D

Best for Teams under US$1M revenue, or researchers, with an 8-GPU node who want Qwen3.8-Flash-Next with shorter thinking for coding and agent work.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 60 against 55

Watch for

Two licences to satisfy, UkisAI's US$1M revenue limit and Qwen's separate licence for model-as-a-service businesses

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-NextEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255560Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next +5
Risk20%207045Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +25
Agent interface10%109060Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +30
Documentation and upkeep10%106540Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B +25
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 68.8/100D 52.3/100

Facts side by side

FactNemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55BSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNVIDIAUkisAI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceOpenMDW-1.1Swift Open License v1.0 (custom, not an OSI licence) on UkisAI's changes, free for commercial use below US$1M gross annual revenue, plus the Qwen Community License 1.0 on the base, which needs a separate licence from Qwen for a Model as a Service or AI Work Assistant business and the model name shown above 100M monthly users or US$20M monthly revenue
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-06-042026-09-24
Terms last updatedno document linked
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 reviews2.8/5 (4)1.8/5 (4)

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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

A large mixture-of-experts cousin, Qwen3.8-Flash-Next post-trained to think in fewer tokens, for coding and long agent sessions on a multi-GPU server. Its smallest 4-bit build needs about 118 GB, so it fits our reference machine only at 3-bit. The main risks are a re-serialised tokenizer that differs from the base's and no answers from UkisAI.

Before you call either

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B

  1. 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
  2. With vLLM serve the NVFP4 build with --trust-remote-code --reasoning-parser nemotron_v3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder on 4 × B200 or more
  3. With SGLang use --reasoning-parser nemotron_3, not the BF16 card's nemotron_v3, which SGLang doesn't register
  4. On SGLang with tools, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true and force_nonempty_content true, as the card says, or reasoning and calls won't both parse
  5. Thinking is on by default. Pass enable_thinking: false for short tasks or medium_effort: true to cut reasoning tokens
  6. Use temperature=1.0 and top_p=0.95, as the generation config sets

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

  1. On a multi-GPU node use vllm serve ukisai/Swift1.5-Qwen3.8-Flash-Next --tensor-parallel-size 8 --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, the parser the base's recipes and the card's SGLang command use
  2. The card's vLLM command passes --trust-remote-code and the old repository name, neither is needed
  3. On our reference machine only UkisAI's GSQ-RCO IQ3_S GGUF (84.7 GB with the projector) fits, below 4-bit
  4. Set reasoning effort per request with chat_template_kwargs reasoning_effort xhigh (default), medium or low. UkisAI's own runs lose about 2.5 points at medium and low
  5. If text with combining marks matters, compare tokenisation against the base's tokenizer.json before trusting outputs
  6. Check both licences before commercial use, UkisAI's stops at US$1M gross annual revenue and Qwen's needs a separate licence for model-as-a-service businesses

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next?

Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B scores 68.8 (B) on agent readiness against Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next's 52.3 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

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