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

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next and Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61.8 (C) and 61 (C). Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B leads on reach, risk 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

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next C

Best for Teams with a multi-GPU server or a 128 GB Mac who want Qwen's newest sparse architecture for agentic coding and multimodal work, and aren't a hosted-model or coding-assistant business.

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 70 against 60

Watch for

No build fits the reference machine's 107.4 GB, and Ollama's smallest Linux build is 120 GB

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

  • Reach, 80 against 65
  • Risk, 50 against 45
  • 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 runQwen3.8-Flash-NextSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256580Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +15
Risk20%204550Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +5
Agent interface10%107060Qwen3.8-Flash-Next +10
Documentation and upkeep10%103643Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +7
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61.8/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactQwen3.8-Flash-NextSwift 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
LicenceQwen Community License 1.0 (custom, not an OSI licence). Free of charge, the model name shown in products above 100M monthly users or US$20M monthly revenue, and a separate licence from Qwen before commercial use by a Model as a Service or AI Work Assistant businessSwift 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 release2026-08-312026-09-24
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 reviews2/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

A large sparse cousin with 6B active parameters for agentic coding and multimodal work, previewing Qwen's next architecture. It needs a 128 GB Mac for Ollama's MLX build or about 144 GB for the 4-bit GGUF, and Qwen Cloud serves it. The main risk is a licence that needs a separate deal for hosted-model and coding or office assistant businesses.

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

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

  1. On a 128 GB Mac start it with ollama run qwen3.8-flash-next:125b-mlx (105 GB, NVFP4), on Linux the smallest Ollama build is qwen3.8-flash-next:125b-a6b-q4_K_M at 120 GB, which won't fit a 107.4 GB GPU share
  2. On a server, vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-FP8 --tensor-parallel-size 4 --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. Use the qwen3_coder tool parser and the qwen3 reasoning parser, as Qwen's GitHub README does
  4. Thinking is on by default, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false to skip it, and read the reasoning from reasoning_content, even though SGLang's cookbook says thinking can't be turned off
  5. reasoning_effort takes xhigh (default), medium or low, and any other value makes the template raise an error
  6. Send at most one system message and put it first, since the template raises an error otherwise
  7. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 when thinking, temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8 and presence_penalty 1.5 without
  8. vLLM keeps the 51B n-gram table in host memory on 80 GB GPUs by default, per its recipe
  9. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented
  10. Read the Qwen Community License before serving it to others as an API or inside a coding or office assistant product

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, Qwen3.8-Flash-Next or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B?

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next and Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61.8 (C) and 61 (C). Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B leads on reach, risk and documentation and upkeep.

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

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