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

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores 62.7 (B) on agent readiness against OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT's 56.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT 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 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT C

Best for Telecoms teams that want an open model for standards questions and RAG on their own hardware

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 74 against 31

Watch for

BF16 only at 62.6 GB, with no GGUF or other quantised build from anyone we checked

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B B

Best for Agents with a 32 GB or larger machine that want a quick, permissively licensed coding and tool-calling cousin with vision.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 50
  • Agent interface, 70 against 60

Watch for

No safety evaluation, no agent-use guidance and no way to report a security flaw

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.

Documentation and upkeep OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT +43

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT 74

Model card 14, Intended use, a long limitations section, the architecture and training method, the parameters (31B) and the language (English) are on the card. Training data 15, the card names the sources (3GPP, ETSI, ITU, GSMA, CAMARA, O-RAN and TM Forum material provided by GSMA), the overall sizes (15 billion raw tokens, over 1 trillion processed, about 440 billion used), the mix of example types and the processing tool, and lists what was left out. Last change 20, the last commit, on 1 November 2026, updated the card's links, resources, citation and contacts, nine days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 3 discussions that aren't pull requests (7 August to 28 October 2026), 2 have a reply from the repository's owner, which is most. Version policy 0, the weights were replaced in place: uploads on 27 July, 3 August and 1 September 2026 under one name, with a standing notice on the card that they may change and that users should pin a revision, and no dated note of what changed. File health 5, the card describes 15 shards of about 62.6 GB while the repository still holds an earlier 14-shard set beside them, 126.8 GB in all. 14 + 15 + 20 + 20 + 0 + 5 = 74.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 31

The model card earns 11, covering intended use, architecture, parameters and context but not limitations, languages or a cut-off. Training data earns 5 for a general description with no cut-off. The last change earns 5, a README edit on 24 April 2026, 192 days before this check, past 180 days and within a year, and Qwen's GitHub repository holds only a README and licence, so no reference code of Alibaba's changed later. Responsiveness earns 0, with no Qwen reply in the 40 most recent of 62 discussions that aren't pull requests, recounted on 2 November. Version policy earns 5, the earlier version kept in its own repository without a note. File health earns 5, the files agree but reports about tool calling and the template wait unanswered.

Reach Qwen3.6-35B-A3B +35

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT 50

Memory 10, the publisher's only build is the BF16 safetensors, 62.55 GB for the 15 shards the index names, and 62.55 GB × 1.2 = 75.1 GB, above 64 GB and inside the reference machine's GPU share. Runtimes 15, the architecture is Gemma4ForConditionalGeneration, which vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23 and Transformers 5.22.2 run from the safetensors files, three at 5 each. Builds 0, the publisher ships the BF16 weights only. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata, an OSI licence, with nothing added on the card. Download 10, gated is false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account or terms. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps one inference provider, Featherless AI (live), short of the two the line needs. 10 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 50.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 85

Memory earns 20 because the smallest 4-bit build from a runtime's own library is Ollama's Q4_K_M at 23 GB, which comes to 27.6 GB with the fifth added, so it needs a 32 GB machine rather than a 24 GB one. Runtimes earn the full 25, since released llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers all run the architecture. Builds earn 10 for Alibaba's one quantised build, FP8, with no 4-bit or GGUF from the publisher. Terms earn 15 for plain Apache 2.0, download earns 10 for ungated files, and hosted earns 5 because DeepInfra, Featherless AI and Scaleway serve it through Hugging Face.

Agent interface Qwen3.6-35B-A3B +10

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT 60

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, 19,300 characters, the publisher's own. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says how tools are declared and how calls come back. Trained tool calling 20, the template loops over tool_calls, so it renders several calls in one turn, and the card says the training mix included general-purpose agentic tool-calling examples, while none were specific to telecoms. Structured output 0, the card doesn't document JSON or JSON Schema output. Reasoning control 0, the card says the model wasn't trained to produce or consume Gemma's thought channel and answers directly, so there is no thinking to switch or budget. Context 10, 262,144 positions in the text config, the base's native context. 20 + 10 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 60.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 70

The chat template earns 20 as a Jinja file in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 10, because the card names the qwen3_coder parser but leaves the return format to the template. Trained tool calling earns 20, with several calls to a turn in the template. Structured output earns 0, as JSON output isn't documented for the model. Reasoning control earns 10, thinking off per request with enable_thinking and the reasoning returned in think tags for the qwen3 parser. Context earns 10 for 262,144 tokens native.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOTel-2.0-LLM-31B-ITQwen3.6-35B-A3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255085Qwen3.6-35B-A3B +35
Risk20%205555even
Agent interface10%106070Qwen3.6-35B-A3B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%107431OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT +43
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 56.8/100B 62.7/100

Facts side by side

FactOTel-2.0-LLM-31B-ITQwen3.6-35B-A3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorAT&T (Open Telco AI)Alibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-012026-04-16
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT

A real telecoms post-training of Gemma 4 31B IT with an unusually candid card on what was and wasn't trained. It fits a 128 GB machine in BF16 only, with no quantised build, sits in a personal account, and its weights have been replaced in place. Tool-call format, structured output and safety results aren't documented.

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

A fast mixture-of-experts cousin with 3B active parameters for coding and tool calling, with image and video input, in every major runtime under plain Apache 2.0. Ollama's 4-bit build needs about 28 GB. The main risk is that nobody at Alibaba maintains it, with no safety results, no security contact and no replies to tool-calling reports.

Before you call either

OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT

  1. Download the 15 shards the index names, not the whole repository, which is twice the size
  2. Pin a revision. The card says the weights may change under the same name
  3. Serve it with vLLM 0.19.0 or later and the repository's own chat template, not Gemma 4's
  4. Send no thinking flags. It answers directly and wasn't trained on Gemma's thought channel
  5. Use it as the generation stage of a RAG pipeline over telecom standards, with source attribution and human review
  6. Don't use it to run network tools unattended. The card says that hasn't been evaluated

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

  1. Start it with ollama run qwen3.6:35b (Q4_K_M, 23 to 24 GB on disk, about 28 GB in memory)
  2. On the reference machine use vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B --max-model-len 131072 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, BF16, since vLLM doesn't document FP8 compute on gfx1151
  3. Use the qwen3_coder tool-call parser and the qwen3 reasoning parser in vLLM 0.19.0 or SGLang 0.5.10 or later
  4. Thinking is on by default and /nothink isn't supported, so pass enable_thinking as false in chat_template_kwargs for short tasks, or preserve_thinking as true to keep earlier reasoning
  5. Card sampling for thinking is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20, presence_penalty 1.5, and for non-thinking temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8
  6. Keep at least 128K of context as the card advises, and turn on YaRN only beyond 262,144 tokens
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since the model card documents none

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores 62.7 (B) on agent readiness against OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT's 56.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT leads on documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

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