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

Qwen3.6-27B vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

Qwen3.6-27B scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B's 61 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B 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

Qwen3.6-27B B

Best for Agents that want an open coding and tool-calling model with vision on one 24 to 32 GB GPU or Mac, with plain licence terms.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 80
  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Agent interface, 70 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

No safety results, prompt-injection guidance or security contact

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B C

Best for Agents on a 24 to 32 GB GPU or Mac that want Qwen3.8-27B's skills with shorter thinking, for teams under US$1M revenue or research.

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 43 against 36

Watch for

Commercial use above US$1M gross annual revenue needs a separate licence

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runQwen3.6-27BSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259080Qwen3.6-27B +10
Risk20%205550Qwen3.6-27B +5
Agent interface10%107060Qwen3.6-27B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%103643Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +7
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 67.2/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactQwen3.6-27BSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorAlibaba (Qwen team)UkisAI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Swift Open License v1.0 (custom, not an OSI licence) on UkisAI's changes, free for commercial use below US$1M gross annual revenue with a separate Swift Enterprise License above it. Built on Qwen3.8-27B, whose Apache 2.0 still governs the base
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-04-222026-09-24
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 reviews3/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Qwen3.6-27B

A capable dense cousin for agentic coding and tool calls with images and video in, running in every major runtime. Ollama's 4-bit build needs about 22 GB, and three providers host it. The main risk is silence, with no safety results, no agent guidance, no answers in its repository and Qwen3.8-27B now ahead of it.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

A Qwen3.8-27B cousin post-trained to think in fewer tokens, for coding and agent work with images in, that fits a 24 GB machine with UkisAI's own 4-bit builds. Commercial use is free only below US$1M revenue. The main risks are that nobody at UkisAI answers its discussions, and that the shorter thinking rests on UkisAI's own benchmarks.

Before you call either

Qwen3.6-27B

  1. Quickest start is ollama run qwen3.6:27b, about 18 GB of files with the vision projector
  2. Alibaba's FP8 build with the card's parsers is vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.6-27B-FP8 --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, vllm 0.19.0 or later
  3. Use the qwen3_coder tool parser, the template writes calls as function and parameter blocks inside tool_call
  4. Thinking is on by default, pass "chat_template_kwargs": {"enable_thinking": false} for short tasks, and /think and /nothink aren't supported
  5. "preserve_thinking": true in chat_template_kwargs keeps earlier reasoning in context, which helps long agent sessions but grows the prompt
  6. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 when thinking, and temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8, presence_penalty 1.5 without
  7. Keep at least 128K of context if you rely on thinking, and turn on YaRN only beyond 262,144 tokens
  8. Validate any JSON it returns or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented
  9. Qwen3.8-27B (listed as qwen3-8-27b) is the newer model at this size on the same runtimes

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

  1. Quickest start is llama-server -hf ukisai/Swift-1.5-Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, about 18.4 GB with the vision projector
  2. On our reference machine BF16 fits, vllm serve ukisai/Swift-1.5-Qwen3.8-27b --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. The template is Qwen3.8-27B's, so chat_template_kwargs with reasoning_effort low, medium or xhigh (default) and enable_thinking false work as on the base
  4. UkisAI benchmarked it at temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 and presence_penalty 0, which is a reasonable starting point
  5. The MLX 4-bit build needs UkisAI's patched MLX-LM and has no image or video chat
  6. Check the licence before commercial use, it stops at US$1M gross annual revenue including affiliates
  7. MTP self-speculative decoding is available with the base's head, flags on the card

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Qwen3.6-27B or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B?

Qwen3.6-27B scores 67.2 (B) on agent readiness against Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B's 61 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B leads on documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Qwen3.6-27B or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

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