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

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next's 52.3 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next leads on documentation and upkeep. 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

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 60
  • Risk, 50 against 45
  • Agent interface, 85 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.3 against 1.8 out of 5

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

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next D

Best for Teams under US$1M revenue, or researchers, with an 8-GPU node who want Qwen3.8-Flash-Next with shorter thinking for coding and agent work.

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 40 against 31

Watch for

Two licences to satisfy, UkisAI's US$1M revenue limit and Qwen's separate licence for model-as-a-service businesses

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrnith-1.5-35B-A3BSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-NextEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259060Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B +30
Risk20%205045Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B +5
Agent interface10%108560Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B +25
Documentation and upkeep10%103140Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next +9
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100D 52.3/100

Facts side by side

FactOrnith-1.5-35B-A3BSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorOrnithUkisAI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITSwift Open License v1.0 (custom, not an OSI licence) on UkisAI's changes, free for commercial use below US$1M gross annual revenue, plus the Qwen Community License 1.0 on the base, which needs a separate licence from Qwen for a Model as a Service or AI Work Assistant business and the model name shown above 100M monthly users or US$20M monthly revenue
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-232026-09-24
Terms last updatedno 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)1.8/5 (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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

A large mixture-of-experts cousin, Qwen3.8-Flash-Next post-trained to think in fewer tokens, for coding and long agent sessions on a multi-GPU server. Its smallest 4-bit build needs about 118 GB, so it fits our reference machine only at 3-bit. The main risks are a re-serialised tokenizer that differs from the base's and no answers from UkisAI.

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

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

  1. On a multi-GPU node use vllm serve ukisai/Swift1.5-Qwen3.8-Flash-Next --tensor-parallel-size 8 --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, the parser the base's recipes and the card's SGLang command use
  2. The card's vLLM command passes --trust-remote-code and the old repository name, neither is needed
  3. On our reference machine only UkisAI's GSQ-RCO IQ3_S GGUF (84.7 GB with the projector) fits, below 4-bit
  4. Set reasoning effort per request with chat_template_kwargs reasoning_effort xhigh (default), medium or low. UkisAI's own runs lose about 2.5 points at medium and low
  5. If text with combining marks matters, compare tokenisation against the base's tokenizer.json before trusting outputs
  6. Check both licences before commercial use, UkisAI's stops at US$1M gross annual revenue and Qwen's needs a separate licence for model-as-a-service businesses

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next?

Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next's 52.3 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next leads on documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

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