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

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B vs SmolLM3-3B

SmolLM3-3B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B's 52.1 (D), and leads in every scored category. 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

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B D

Best for Agent builders who want to train or test an agent against simulated tools, terminals, browsers and phones on a 128 GB machine

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

Watch for

Not a general assistant, and the card doesn't describe using it to call tools

SmolLM3-3B C

Best for Agents that want a small, fully transparent tool-calling cousin on a laptop, CPU or edge device

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 55
  • Risk, 65 against 55
  • Agent interface, 80 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 74 against 41

Watch for

65,536 tokens trained; 131,072 needs a YaRN edit to config.json

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 SmolLM3-3B +33

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 41

Model card 11, the card gives intended use (simulating agent environments), architecture, parameters and context length. Training data 5, A general description without a cut-off, the three training stages and a statement that no outputs from external API services were included. Last change 10, the last commit was on 25 June 2026, an update to the card, 138 days before this check, past 90 days and within 180. Responsiveness 0, 10 discussions that aren't pull requests, opened between 24 June and 5 July 2026. Version policy 5, A first release, with nothing replaced. File health 10, Config, both copies of the template and the card agree on the architecture and the context. 11 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 41.

SmolLM3-3B 74

Model card 14, it covers limitations, architecture, parameters, context and languages but has no intended-use section and leaves the June 2025 cut-off to the chat template. Training data 20, the datasets, mixture weights and post-training set are published with sources and sizes. Last change 20, Hugging Face's ONNX build changed its tokenizer config on 28 October 2026, though the main repository hasn't changed since 10 September 2025. Responsiveness 10, staff answered 14 of 36 discussions, none since November 2025. Version policy 5, a first release never replaced, with no dated notes. File health 5, template and tokenizer reports wait with no reply.

Reach SmolLM3-3B +30

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 55

Memory 10, Alibaba's only build is the BF16 safetensors, 69.32 GB, and 69.32 GB × 1.2 = 83.2 GB, above 64 GB and inside the reference machine's GPU share. Runtimes 20, Four released runtimes run the architecture, vLLM 0.33.0 (Qwen3_5MoeForConditionalGeneration), SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.22.2 (qwen3_5_moe) and llama.cpp b12242 (its Qwen conversion code). Builds 0, Alibaba publishes the BF16 weights only. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, an OSI licence, in the metadata and as a LICENSE file, with no use policy or other terms added. Download 10, the repository isn't gated, so the files download with no account and no terms to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face lists no inference provider for the model (an empty provider mapping on 10 November 2026). 10 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 55.

SmolLM3-3B 85

Memory 30, the smallest 4-bit build Hugging Face publishes is its own ONNX q4f16 at 2.1 GB, about 2.5 GB with the fifth added, and the full BF16 files that the counted runtimes load come to about 7.4 GB, both under 16 GB. Runtimes 20, released Transformers carries the model code, llama.cpp knows the architecture, and vLLM and SGLang run it through their Transformers backends in released versions; Ollama has no library entry and LM Studio's catalogue has none, so those two earn nothing. Builds 10, Hugging Face's ONNX repository has 4-bit builds, one of the checklist's kinds, and int8 builds, which are neither FP8 nor GGUF. They run in ONNX Runtime and Transformers.js rather than the runtimes above. Terms 15, plain Apache 2.0, scored by its terms since the repository holds no LICENSE file. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, no inference provider is listed for it on the Hub and none of the provider lists checked carries it.

Agent interface SmolLM3-3B +30

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 50

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, the same as the template in tokenizer_config.json. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says how tools are declared and how calls come back. Trained tool calling 10, the template renders several tool_call blocks in one turn, but the card presents the model as a simulator of what tools and environments return, not as a tool caller. Structured output 0, no JSON or JSON Schema output documented for the model. Reasoning control 0, the card says thinking is on by default and names the qwen3 reasoning parser, but doesn't say how to turn thinking off or budget it. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native per the card and the text config. 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 50.

SmolLM3-3B 80

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, the card says how tools are declared, how calls come back and which vLLM parser to use. Trained tool calling 20, the template invites one or more calls per turn, each in its own block. Structured output 0, nothing documents asking the weights for JSON. Reasoning control 10, thinking turns off per request through the kwarg or a system-prompt flag, and the reasoning comes back in think tags. Context 5, trained at 65,536 tokens, with 131,072 only through YaRN.

Risk SmolLM3-3B +10

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B 55

File safety 25, 21 safetensors shards and no pickle or Python files, and config.json has no auto_map. Provenance 15, files sit in the Qwen organisation, the one Alibaba's Qwen repositories on GitHub link to per the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B listing (10), and the Hub gives a SHA-256 for every large file (5). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, no prompt-injection guidance, instruction hierarchy, refusal statement or general cautions on the card. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, no threshold and no terms the licensor can change or revoke, and the card's licence link points at the LICENSE file in the repository. Security programme 0, no reporting route on the card. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.

SmolLM3-3B 65

File safety 25, safetensors only and nothing from the repository runs on load or to build prompts. Provenance 15, the HuggingFaceTB organisation linked from Hugging Face's launch post, with a SHA-256 for each shard. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 5, only the general cautions in the card's Limitations section. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added and a working licence link. Security programme 5, huggingface.co has a valid security.txt and Transformers has a security policy; whether advisories are handled in public couldn't be checked from our session, so that half is scored as absent.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runQwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3BSmolLM3-3BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255585SmolLM3-3B +30
Risk20%205565SmolLM3-3B +10
Agent interface10%105080SmolLM3-3B +30
Documentation and upkeep10%104174SmolLM3-3B +33
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 52.1/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactQwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3BSmolLM3-3B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorAlibaba (Qwen team)Hugging Face
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-06-252025-09-10
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone3.3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

A specialist, not a chat model. It plays the environment an agent acts in, across seven domains, so you can train or test an agent without the real thing. Alibaba ships BF16 only, which fits a 128 GB machine, and hasn't answered a discussion on it or changed the files since June.

SmolLM3-3B

A tiny, fully open cousin with documented tool calling and switchable thinking, for local subtasks and routing on laptops and CPUs. It needs about 8 GB in BF16, or under 3 GB in Hugging Face's 4-bit ONNX build. The main risks are a 64K native context, no safety results and no staff reply in its discussions since November 2025.

Before you call either

Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B

  1. Use it as the environment, not the agent. Give it the domain's system prompt from Alibaba's GitHub repository, the history and the agent's action, and it returns the predicted observation
  2. With vLLM pass --language-model-only, or startup fails on the missing vision weights
  3. Use temperature 0.6, top_p 0.95 and top_k 20, and allow up to 32,768 output tokens, as the card recommends
  4. Keep at least 128K of context, since the simulation depends on the history
  5. Thinking is on by default and comes back through the qwen3 reasoning parser
  6. A simulated observation is a prediction. Check anything that matters against the real environment

SmolLM3-3B

  1. Start it with vllm serve HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser=hermes, or tool calls come back as text
  2. Pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, since thinking is on by default; a /think or /no_think flag in the system prompt overrides the kwarg
  3. Put earlier tool calls in the assistant message content, since the template ignores a tool_calls field when it renders history
  4. Add the YaRN rope_scaling block (factor 2.0, original 65536) to config.json before sending more than 65,536 tokens
  5. Use temperature 0.6 and top_p 0.95, the card's recommended sampling
  6. Needs Transformers v4.53.0 or later; for llama.cpp use a GGUF from ggml-org or another converter, since Hugging Face publishes none
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B or SmolLM3-3B?

SmolLM3-3B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B's 52.1 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B or SmolLM3-3B

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.