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

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B vs Ornith-1.5-9B

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B and Ornith-1.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Ornith-1.5-9B 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

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B C

Best for Local coding and terminal agents on a 24 to 32 GB GPU or a Mac, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

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

Ornith-1.5-9B C

Best for Local coding and terminal agents on a laptop or a single consumer GPU, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 90

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrnith-1.5-35B-A3BOrnith-1.5-9BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259095Ornith-1.5-9B +5
Risk20%205050even
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%103131even
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactOrnith-1.5-35B-A3BOrnith-1.5-9B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorOrnithOrnith
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-232026-08-23
Terms last updatedno document linkedno 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 reviews2.3/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B

A mid-size coding and terminal-agent cousin with about 3B active parameters, XML tool calls that vLLM and SGLang parse and 262,144 tokens of context. It runs in about 24 GB from Ornith's MLX 4-bit build or 32 GB from its GGUF. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, safety results or replies to 35 reports.

Ornith-1.5-9B

A small coding and terminal-agent cousin with thinking on by default, XML tool calls that vLLM and SGLang parse, and 262,144 tokens of context. Ornith's own 4-bit builds run in under 8 GB in most local runtimes. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, no safety results, files replaced without a note and no replies.

Before you call either

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B

  1. Start it with ollama run ornith-1.5:35b, or llama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B-GGUF --port 8000 -c 262144 as the card gives it
  2. 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
  3. Thinking is on by default. Send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  4. Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
  5. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 for general tasks and temperature 1.0 to reproduce the card's benchmarks
  6. Pin a revision when you download, since Ornith has replaced files in place, and add mmproj-Ornith-1.5-35B-BF16.gguf (0.9 GB) for image input in llama.cpp
  7. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Ornith-1.5-9B

  1. Start it with ollama run ornith-1.5:9b, or llama-server -hf ornith-ai/Ornith-1.5-9B-GGUF with the Q4_K_M file
  2. 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
  3. Thinking is on by default. Send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  4. Pin which template your runtime loads, since chat_template.jinja keeps earlier reasoning and the tokenizer_config.json template drops it
  5. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 for coding and temperature 1.0 with presence_penalty 1.5 for general tasks, per the card
  6. Pin a revision when you download, since Ornith has replaced files in place, and add mmproj-Ornith-1.5-9B-BF16.gguf (0.9 GB) for image input in llama.cpp
  7. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B or Ornith-1.5-9B?

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B and Ornith-1.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Ornith-1.5-9B leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B or Ornith-1.5-9B

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