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

Ornith-1.5-122B vs Qwen3.8-27B

Qwen3.8-27B scores 68.6 (B) on agent readiness against Ornith-1.5-122B's 61 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. 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

Qwen3.8-27B B

Best for Agents that want a capable open model with vision on one 24 to 32 GB GPU or Mac, with the widest runtime support and a plain licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 75
  • Risk, 55 against 50

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.

Reach Qwen3.8-27B +15

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.

Qwen3.8-27B 90

Memory 25 of 30, Ollama's smallest 4-bit build is 18 GB, or 21.6 GB with a fifth added, which fits 24 GB. Runtimes 25, released versions of llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers all run the qwen3_5 architecture. 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 5, seven inference providers are live for it on Hugging Face on 1 November, though Qwen Cloud's own version is still described as coming soon.

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.

Qwen3.8-27B 70

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10 of 25, the format lives only in the template and the parser name only in serving commands, Alibaba doesn't describe how tools are declared or returned. Trained tool calling 20, the template renders several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 10, thinking turns off per request, reasoning_effort budgets it and the card shows the reasoning coming back in reasoning_content. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

Risk Qwen3.8-27B +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.

Qwen3.8-27B 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, and every file has a checksum. 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.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrnith-1.5-122BQwen3.8-27BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257590Qwen3.8-27B +15
Risk20%205055Qwen3.8-27B +5
Agent interface10%108570Ornith-1.5-122B +15
Documentation and upkeep10%103636even
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100B 68.6/100

Facts side by side

FactOrnith-1.5-122BQwen3.8-27B
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 release2026-10-242026-08-14
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

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.

Qwen3.8-27B

A dense cousin for coding and agent work with image and video input that runs almost anywhere. Ollama's 4-bit build needs about 22 GB, and seven providers host it for agents without the hardware. The main risk is that nobody at Alibaba answers, there are no safety results or agent guidance, and the tool format is only in the template.

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

Qwen3.8-27B

  1. Quickest start is ollama run qwen3.8, about 18 GB of files
  2. On our reference machine use BF16 with vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B --max-model-len 131072 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, since FP8 on gfx1151 isn't documented
  3. Use the qwen3_coder tool parser, SGLang's cookbook says the Hermes parser leaves its calls unparsed
  4. Thinking is on by default, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, and read the reasoning from reasoning_content
  5. reasoning_effort takes xhigh (default), medium or low, and any other value makes the template raise an error
  6. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 when thinking, temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8 and presence_penalty 1.5 without
  7. Preserved thinking keeps earlier reasoning in the context unless preserve_thinking is false, which grows long agent sessions
  8. Turn on YaRN only beyond 262,144 tokens, the card warns static YaRN can cost quality on short texts
  9. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ornith-1.5-122B or Qwen3.8-27B?

Qwen3.8-27B scores 68.6 (B) on agent readiness against Ornith-1.5-122B's 61 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ornith-1.5-122B leads on agent interface.

Other comparisons with Ornith-1.5-122B or Qwen3.8-27B

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