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

Ornith-1.5-122B vs Qwen3.5-9B

Ornith-1.5-122B and Qwen3.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.5 (C). Qwen3.5-9B leads on reach and risk. 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

Qwen3.5-9B C

Best for Agents that want a small multimodal tool-calling model on a laptop or a 16 GB GPU, under a plain licence

Ahead on

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

Watch for

No quantised build from Qwen itself

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.

Qwen3.5-9B 70

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the card names the qwen3_coder parser for vLLM and SGLang but leaves the declaration and return format to the template, and Qwen's own function-calling guide still describes Qwen3's Hermes format. Trained tool calling 20, the template renders several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, nothing documents asking the weights for JSON. Reasoning control 10, thinking turns off per request with enable_thinking false and the reasoning comes back in think tags that the qwen3 parser splits out. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

Reach Qwen3.5-9B +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.

Qwen3.5-9B 85

Memory 30, Qwen publishes no quantised 9B, so the smallest 4-bit build from a runtime's own library is Ollama's qwen3.5:9b at 6.6 GB, about 7.9 GB with the fifth added, well under 16 GB. Runtimes 25, the cap, with vLLM listed in its stable docs, Transformers at released tags, llama.cpp, Ollama's library, LM Studio's own catalogue and SGLang all running the architecture. Builds 0, Qwen's FP8 and GPTQ repositories cover only the 27B and larger Qwen3.5 models, so every quantisation of the 9B is someone else's. Terms 15, plain Apache 2.0. Download 10, the repository isn't gated. Hosted 5, Together, Featherless AI, OVHcloud and DeepInfra are live for it on its Hugging Face page. 30 + 25 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 85.

Risk Qwen3.5-9B +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.

Qwen3.5-9B 55

File safety 25, safetensors only and nothing from the repository runs on load or to build prompts. Provenance 15, the Qwen organisation linked from Alibaba's QwenLM README, with a SHA-256 for every shard. Safety evaluation 0, none on the card, and the Qwen3.5 blog couldn't be read, so this is couldn't check scored as absent. Agent guidance 0, the card has no prompt-injection guidance, refusal scope or cautions. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added and a working licence link. Security programme 0, no SECURITY.md in Qwen's GitHub repositories, no security.txt on qwen.ai or alibabacloud.com, and whether Alibaba's group security centre takes reports about Qwen models couldn't be checked.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrnith-1.5-122BQwen3.5-9BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257585Qwen3.5-9B +10
Risk20%205055Qwen3.5-9B +5
Agent interface10%108570Ornith-1.5-122B +15
Documentation and upkeep10%103634Ornith-1.5-122B +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 60.5/100

Facts side by side

FactOrnith-1.5-122BQwen3.5-9B
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 reviewsnone2.5/5 (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.

Qwen3.5-9B

A small dense vision-language model with trained tool calling, thinking that turns off per request and a 262,144-token context. Ollama's 4-bit build is 6.6 GB and the BF16 files 19.3 GB, and every major runtime loads it. The files haven't changed since 2 March 2026, Qwen answered none of the 40 latest discussions, and no safety results are published.

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

Qwen3.5-9B

  1. Smallest start is ollama run qwen3.5:9b (6.6 GB, q4_k_m)
  2. On vLLM run vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.5-9B --port 8000 --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, or tool calls come back as text
  3. Tool calls use the XML style <tool_call><function=name><parameter=x>, not Hermes JSON, so use the qwen3_coder parser and not hermes
  4. Thinking is on by default; pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, since /nothink isn't supported
  5. There's no generation_config.json, so pass sampling yourself, temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20, presence_penalty 1.5 when thinking, or 0.7, 0.8, 20, 1.5 without
  6. Keep at least 128K of context when thinking, and turn on YaRN only beyond 262,144 tokens
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ornith-1.5-122B or Qwen3.5-9B?

Ornith-1.5-122B and Qwen3.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.5 (C). Qwen3.5-9B leads on reach and risk.

Other comparisons with Ornith-1.5-122B or Qwen3.5-9B

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