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

Ornith-1.5-122B vs Qwen3.5-4B

Qwen3.5-4B and Ornith-1.5-122B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61.2 (C) and 61 (C). Ornith-1.5-122B leads on agent interface. 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

Ornith-1.5-122B C

Best for Local coding and terminal agents on a 128 GB unified-memory machine or a 96 GB GPU setup, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 85 against 70

Watch for

No LICENSE file though the card links one, and no notice for the Apache 2.0 Qwen3.5 and Gemma 4 work it builds on

Qwen3.5-4B C

Best for Agents that want a cheap local helper for tool calls, short reasoning and reading images on a laptop or small GPU

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 75
  • Risk, 55 against 50

Watch for

No quantised build from Alibaba for this size

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 Ornith-1.5-122B +15

Ornith-1.5-122B 85

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, the card shows how tools go in and how calls come back and names the parser for vLLM and SGLang. Trained tool calling 20, Ornith trains it on agent tasks and the template renders several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented or claimed. Reasoning control 10, Ornith's template reads enable_thinking per request and the card says the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content, though the card doesn't name the switch. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

Qwen3.5-4B 70

The template ships in the repository (20) and the model was trained for tool use with several calls per turn in the template (20). Tool-calling format gets 10, because the card names the qwen3_coder parser but leaves the declaration and call format to the template. Thinking turns off per request and comes back in think tags split by the qwen3 parser (10), and 262,144 tokens is native (10). Structured output scores 0, as nothing documents JSON output for the model.

Reach Qwen3.5-4B +10

Ornith-1.5-122B 75

Memory 10, since Ornith's own MLX 4-bit build is 69.7 GB and needs about 83.6 GB with the fifth added, over 64 GB and inside the reference machine's 107.4 GB, as do its Q4_K_M GGUF, its NVFP4 build and Ollama's build. Runtimes 25, the most the line gives, from vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2, llama.cpp's qwen35moe architecture, Ollama's library and LM Studio's catalogue for the qwen35moe architecture. Builds 15, Ornith publishes FP8, NVFP4, GGUF and MLX at several precisions. Terms 15, MIT as named in the card's metadata, with nothing added, read by its terms though the repository has no licence file. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, Ornith runs no API and no inference provider serves it. 10 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 75.

Qwen3.5-4B 85

Memory earns the full 30 because Ollama's own Q4_K_M build is 3.3 GB, about 4 GB with the fifth added, though Alibaba itself publishes no quantised 4B, so builds scores 0. Runtimes reach the 25 cap on vLLM's stable release, Transformers 5.2.0, llama.cpp, Ollama's library and LM Studio's catalogue. Apache 2.0 with nothing added gives the full 15 for terms, the ungated repository the full 10 for download, and two providers (featherless-ai, live on Hugging Face on 2 November, and Doubleword's own list per the 21 October check) the 5 for hosted too. 30 + 25 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 85.

Risk Qwen3.5-4B +5

Ornith-1.5-122B 50

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and no Python in any of Ornith's repositories for this size, so the card's --trust-remote-code flag loads nothing from the repository. Provenance 15, the files come from the ornith-ai organisation Ornith's blog links to, with a SHA-256 for every weight file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either. Licence risk 10, MIT carries no policy, threshold or changeable terms, but the card's licence link is broken. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact.

Qwen3.5-4B 55

Safetensors only with no remote code gives file safety its 25, and files in the Qwen organisation the publisher's GitHub links to, each with a hash on the Hub, give provenance 15. The Apache 2.0 licence carries none of the deductions, so licence risk keeps 15. Safety evaluation, agent guidance and a security programme score 0, since the card has no safety results or cautions and no reporting route was found. The Qwen3.5 blog and Alibaba's security response centre couldn't be read, so those two are scored as absent and left open.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrnith-1.5-122BQwen3.5-4BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257585Qwen3.5-4B +10
Risk20%205055Qwen3.5-4B +5
Agent interface10%108570Ornith-1.5-122B +15
Documentation and upkeep10%103634Ornith-1.5-122B +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61.2/100

Facts side by side

FactOrnith-1.5-122BQwen3.5-4B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorOrnithAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-242026-03-02
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Ornith-1.5-122B

The largest Ornith that fits a 128 GB machine, a coding and terminal-agent cousin on Qwen3.5-122B-A10B's architecture with XML tool calls and 262,144 tokens of context. Its 4-bit builds need 84 to 93 GB. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, safety results or replies, and a card that misstates the hardware.

Qwen3.5-4B

A small vision-language cousin for tool calls, light agent steps and image or video reading on almost any machine, with switchable thinking. Ollama's 3.3 GB build or the 9.3 GB BF16 files run in every major runtime under plain Apache 2.0. The main risks are no safety results, no structured-output guarantee and no answers from Alibaba since March.

Before you call either

Ornith-1.5-122B

  1. Start it with ollama run ornith-1.5:122b-q4_K_M, or llama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-122B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 262144
  2. Budget about 92 GB for the Q4_K_M GGUF with a working context, and less context if the machine has under 100 GB for the model
  3. In vLLM pass --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_xml --reasoning-parser qwen3, and in SGLang --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser qwen3, so tool calls and reasoning come back parsed
  4. Thinking is on by default. Send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  5. Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
  6. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 for coding and temperature 1.0 for general tasks, as the card recommends
  7. Add mmproj-Ornith-1.5-122B-BF16.gguf (0.9 GB) for image input in llama.cpp, and validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Qwen3.5-4B

  1. Smallest start is ollama run qwen3.5:4b (Q4_K_M, about 4 GB with context)
  2. Full precision vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B --port 8000 --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. Turn thinking off with "chat_template_kwargs": {"enable_thinking": false} in the request body, since it's on by default and /think and /nothink aren't supported
  4. There's no generation_config.json, so pass the card's sampling yourself, for example temperature=0.7, top_p=0.8, top_k=20, presence_penalty=1.5 without thinking
  5. Keep the context at 128K or more if you rely on thinking, and turn on YaRN only past 262,144 tokens
  6. Validate any JSON it returns, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ornith-1.5-122B or Qwen3.5-4B?

Qwen3.5-4B and Ornith-1.5-122B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61.2 (C) and 61 (C). Ornith-1.5-122B leads on agent interface.

Other comparisons with Ornith-1.5-122B or Qwen3.5-4B

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.