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

North Mini Code 1.0 vs Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507

North Mini Code 1.0 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507's 54.5 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

North Mini Code 1.0 C

Best for Developers who want a coding agent on their own GPU with a permissive licence

Ahead on

  • Risk, 60 against 55
  • Agent interface, 85 against 75
  • Documentation and upkeep, 36 against 26

Watch for

No limitations, safety results, languages or data description on the card

Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 C

Best for Agents that want a small instruct model on a laptop, phone-class device or spare GPU, with a plain licence and long context.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 85

Watch for

No safety results, prompt-injection guidance or security contact

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.

Agent interface North Mini Code 1.0 +10

North Mini Code 1.0 85

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (12,397 characters). Tool-calling format 25, the card documents how tools are declared (JSON schema through the chat template), how the call and its thinking go back into the history and how results are appended, and names the cohere_command4 tool-call parser for vLLM, which released vLLM has. Trained tool calling 20, the card says the model was specifically trained with tool-use capabilities for agentic coding, with reinforcement learning on verifiable tasks, and the template renders every call in a turn with thinking between them. Structured output 0, JSON schema is for describing tools. Reasoning control 10, the template has a reasoning_effort setting, and the card names the cohere_command4 reasoning parser, which returns thinking apart from the answer. Context 10, 256K tokens per the card, with 64K of output, and 500,000 positions in config.json. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 75

Chat template 20, a Jinja template in tokenizer_config.json. Tool-calling format 25, Qwen's own Function Calling guide documents the Hermes-style declaration and how calls come back, and names vLLM's hermes parser. Trained tool calling 20, the template allows one or more calls a turn. Structured output 0, not documented for the model, and Qwen's docs only point to vLLM's generic guided decoding. Reasoning control 0, this edition has no thinking. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native. Template and config unchanged on 4 November. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 75.

Documentation and upkeep North Mini Code 1.0 +10

North Mini Code 1.0 36

Model card 11, Intended use, the architecture, the parameters and the context are on the card. Training data 0, the card gives the training method and nothing about the data. Last change 10, the main repository last changed on 15 June 2026 (outdated chat templates removed), 148 days before this check, and the draft model's repository on 29 July, 104 days. Responsiveness 0, none of the 11 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (7 June to 6 November 2026) has a reply from a CohereLabs member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, A first release, with each build in its own repository. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture, and the June commit that removed broken templates says so. 11 + 0 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 36.

Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 26

Model card 11 of 20, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, but limitations, named languages and a knowledge cut-off aren't. Training data 5, the cited Qwen3 report describes the data in general terms without a cut-off. Last change 0, the files last changed on 17 September 2025 (Hub lastModified on 4 November), more than a year ago. Responsiveness 0, counted by script on 4 November, Qwen answered none of the 20 questions and reports. Version policy 5, the older Qwen3-4B stays in its own repository without a note. File health 5, the files agree with the card in substance but reports wait without a reply. 11 + 5 + 0 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 26.

Reach Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 +5

North Mini Code 1.0 85

Memory 25, the smallest build from Cohere is the w4a16 repository, 19.38 GB, and 19.38 GB × 1.2 = 23.3 GB, within 24 GB. Unsloth's GGUF isn't read for this line. Runtimes 20, Released vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23 and Transformers 5.22.2 have the cohere2_moe model, and llama.cpp b12242 has the cohere2moe architecture. Builds 15, Quantised builds from Cohere at two precisions, FP8 and 4-bit weights (w4a16), each in its own repository. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the metadata and on the card, 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. 25 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 85.

Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 90

Memory 30, LM Studio's and Ollama's 4-bit builds are 2.3 to 2.5 GB, about 3 GB with a fifth added, inside 16 GB. Runtimes 25, released Transformers, vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp run the qwen3 architecture, Ollama's released build pins a llama.cpp that has it, and LM Studio's catalogue carries it. Builds 10 of 15, Alibaba's only quantised build is FP8. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, neither repository is gated. Hosted 0, on 4 November 2026 the Hub's provider mapping showed only Featherless AI with status error, Nscale was gone and Alibaba's Model Studio doesn't list it. 30 + 25 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 90.

Risk North Mini Code 1.0 +5

North Mini Code 1.0 60

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in Cohere's verified CohereLabs organisation, which cohere.com links to per our other Cohere listings (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 5, Cohere's trust centre holds a responsible disclosure policy with a bug bounty, as recorded on our Cohere listings (5). 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 60.

Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 55

File safety 25, safetensors only and nothing from the repository runs to load it or build prompts. Provenance 15, the files are in the Qwen organisation that Qwen's GitHub links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0 that hasn't changed. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact for Qwen was found, and Alibaba's group security centre couldn't be checked, so it's scored as absent. Files unchanged on 4 November, and QwenLM/Qwen3 still has no SECURITY.md. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNorth Mini Code 1.0Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258590Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 +5
Risk20%206055North Mini Code 1.0 +5
Agent interface10%108575North Mini Code 1.0 +10
Documentation and upkeep10%103626North Mini Code 1.0 +10
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 54.5/100

Facts side by side

FactNorth Mini Code 1.0Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorCohereAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-292025-09-17
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

North Mini Code 1.0

A coding agent model that fits one 24 GB GPU at 4 bits, trained for tool use, with a 256K context, Apache 2.0 and four released runtimes. It's a research release and reads like one: nothing on limitations, safety or data, the card's run instructions are out of date, and Cohere hasn't answered a question on the repository.

Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507

A small dense instruct model for instruction following, short tool-calling jobs and long documents, with no thinking step. Its 4-bit builds need about 3 GB under Apache 2.0, but no live inference provider was found for it on 4 November 2026. Its files haven't changed in over a year, Alibaba hasn't answered its discussions, and no safety results are published.

Before you call either

North Mini Code 1.0

  1. Serve it with vLLM 0.33.0 or later and --tool-call-parser cohere_command4 --reasoning-parser cohere_command4 --enable-auto-tool-choice, with cohere_melody installed
  2. Pass the model's thinking back with its tool calls on every turn. The card says results drop without it
  3. Describe tools in JSON schema and append tool results as a dictionary with the tool role
  4. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95
  5. For llama.cpp the GGUF files are Unsloth's or bartowski's conversions, not Cohere's
  6. It's text only. Don't send images

Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507

  1. Quickest start is ollama run qwen3:4b-instruct, 2.5 GB. Plain qwen3:4b is the Thinking-2507 edition, not this one
  2. On our reference machine use BF16 with vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 --max-model-len 262144 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser hermes
  3. Use the hermes parser in vLLM or qwen25 in SGLang, the template emits JSON inside tool_call tags
  4. Don't pass enable_thinking, this edition never thinks and the card says the flag isn't needed
  5. Sampling per the card is temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8, top_k 20 and min_p 0, with presence_penalty up to 2 against repetition
  6. Drop the context to 32,768 tokens if memory runs out, as the card suggests
  7. Validate JSON yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, North Mini Code 1.0 or Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507?

North Mini Code 1.0 scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507's 54.5 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 leads on reach.

Other comparisons with North Mini Code 1.0 or Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507

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