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

Ornith-1.5-397B vs Qwen3-Coder-Next

Ornith-1.5-397B scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Coder-Next's 57.6 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-Coder-Next leads on reach and 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-1.5-397B C

Best for A self-hosted frontier-scale coding agent on an 8-GPU server, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 85 against 75

Watch for

Needs about 290 GB of memory at 4 bits and about 970 GB in BF16, so it doesn't fit the reference machine

Qwen3-Coder-Next C

Best for Agents that want a local coding model for long tool-calling loops on a single 64 GB to 128 GB machine.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 41 against 36

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 2.0 out of 5

Watch for

No LICENSE file anywhere and a broken licence link on the card

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrnith-1.5-397BQwen3-Coder-NextEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256585Qwen3-Coder-Next +20
Risk20%205050even
Agent interface10%108575Ornith-1.5-397B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%103641Qwen3-Coder-Next +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59/100C 57.6/100

Facts side by side

FactOrnith-1.5-397BQwen3-Coder-Next
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 release2026-08-232026-02-03
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 reviews2/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

Ornith-1.5-397B

Ornith's flagship coding and terminal-agent cousin, with XML tool calls that vLLM and SGLang parse and 262,144 tokens of context. It needs about 290 GB even at 4 bits, so a multi-GPU server, not the 128 GB reference machine. The main risk is an absent publisher, with no licence file, no safety results and files replaced without a note.

Qwen3-Coder-Next

A fast coding cousin for agent harnesses, with 3B active parameters and tool calling trained across many scaffold formats for Claude Code, Cline or Qwen Code loops. Alibaba's 4-bit GGUF needs about 58 GB, fitting one 64 GB machine, and two providers host it. The main risk is neglect, with no change since February, no replies and no safety results.

Before you call either

Ornith-1.5-397B

  1. Start it with the card's vLLM command at --tensor-parallel-size 8, or ollama run ornith-1.5:397b on a machine with about 300 GB of memory
  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. When downloading the NVFP4 build, fetch only the files its model.safetensors.index.json names (the 25-shard set, 241.7 GB), not the eight extra shards
  6. Pin a revision when you download, since Ornith has replaced files in place
  7. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

Qwen3-Coder-Next

  1. Quickest start is ollama run qwen3-coder-next (Q4_K_M, 52 GB of files)
  2. On our reference machine Alibaba's Q8_0 GGUF (84.8 GB, about 102 GB in use) also fits, run with llama-server -m Qwen3-Coder-Next-Q8_0/Qwen3-Coder-Next-Q8_0-00001-of-00004.gguf --jinja -ngl 99 -fa on -c 131072
  3. Serve with vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-Next --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder (vLLM 0.15.0 or later), using the built-in parser rather than the repository's qwen3coder_tool_parser_vllm.py, which fails to import on newer vLLM per discussion 36
  4. The card's commands use tensor parallel 2 though the text says 4 GPUs, and it suggests cutting the context to 32,768 if the server fails to start
  5. There's no thinking mode, so don't pass enable_thinking or wait for reasoning_content
  6. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 40
  7. The GGUF card's llama.cpp example path omits the quant from the file name; the real files are named like Qwen3-Coder-Next-Q4_K_M-00001-of-00004.gguf
  8. Validate any JSON it returns, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ornith-1.5-397B or Qwen3-Coder-Next?

Ornith-1.5-397B scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Coder-Next's 57.6 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-Coder-Next leads on reach and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Ornith-1.5-397B or Qwen3-Coder-Next

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