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

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct vs Recursive Flint

Recursive Flint scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct's 41.8 (E), 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 3023 open weights comparisons

Best conversational voice-agent APIs · All 392 voice agents comparisons

Which one, for what

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct E

Best for Agents on a machine with about 96 GB to spare that need one local model to hear, see and answer by voice

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

Watch for

Only a 70.5 GB BF16 build, about 85 GB to run, with no quantised build from Alibaba

Recursive Flint C

Best for Agents doing repository work on a 32 to 48 GB Mac or NVIDIA box that want a fast sparse coder with documented tool calls and a plain licence.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 75 against 55
  • Risk, 60 against 55
  • Agent interface, 90 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 26

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.0 out of 5

Watch for

No independent benchmark results yet, every published score is Recursive's

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runQwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-InstructRecursive FlintEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255575Recursive Flint +20
Risk20%205560Recursive Flint +5
Agent interface10%106090Recursive Flint +30
Documentation and upkeep10%102667Recursive Flint +41
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 41.8/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactQwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-InstructRecursive Flint
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorAlibaba (Qwen team)Recursive
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2025-09-222026-10-21
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)3.5/5 (4)

Verdicts

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct

An omni-modal cousin that listens, watches and reads, then answers in text or one of three voices, with tool calls from spoken requests, under plain Apache 2.0. Its only build, BF16, needs about 85 GB, and speech out needs Transformers or vLLM-Omni. The main risk is no answers from Qwen and no safety work for speech-driven actions.

Recursive Flint

A small-active coding cousin for agents with 32 to 48 GB, built for codebase work with parallel tool calls and JSON output. It needs llama.cpp b11803 or Ollama 0.40.8 or later, and the BF16 checkpoint needs a 141 GB GPU. Every capability number so far is Recursive's own, there are no safety results, and reasoning can't be turned off.

Before you call either

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct

  1. For text answers, mkdir -p media && vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct --dtype bfloat16 --max-model-len 32768 --allowed-local-media-path "$(pwd)/media" with vLLM 0.11.1 or later serves the Thinker on an OpenAI-compatible API
  2. The card's command passes --allowed-local-media-path /, which lets anyone who can reach the server have it read any file on the machine through a file:// URL. Point it at a dedicated folder that holds only the media you mean to send, as above, and give vLLM an absolute path
  3. Send audio as audio_url and images as image_url content parts; vLLM serve doesn't take use_audio_in_video, so pass a video's audio separately
  4. For speech out, load Qwen3OmniMoeForConditionalGeneration in Transformers 4.57.0 or later with qwen-omni-utils, pick speaker Ethan, Chelsie or Aiden, and write the returned waveform at 24 kHz
  5. Call model.disable_talker() or pass return_audio=False when you only need text, which saves about 10 GB and time
  6. Parse tool calls as JSON inside <tool_call> tags yourself, since no parser is named, and confirm actions triggered by speech before running them
  7. Keep use_audio_in_video the same across every step of a conversation, the card warns results go wrong otherwise
  8. Budget memory for video, the card's table rises from 78.85 GB for 15 seconds to 144.81 GB for 120 seconds in BF16

Recursive Flint

  1. Quickest start is ollama run flint (Ollama 0.40.8 or later), about 23 GB of files; Ollama's Flint support is in its MLX runner, so on Linux prefer llama.cpp
  2. With llama.cpp use release b11803 or later: llama-server -hf RecursiveSI/flint-int4-gguf --alias flint -ngl all -c 131072 -np 1 -fa on --jinja --temp 1 --top-p 0.95 --top-k 20 --min-p 0, and keep --jinja on
  3. Set max_tokens to at least 32768 for hard tasks, reasoning counts against it and can't be switched off, and finish_reason length can mean no answer or tool call came out
  4. Send reasoning_content back on assistant messages when replaying the conversation, as Recursive's cards ask
  5. Strip <tool_call>, <tool_response>, <arg_key> and <arg_value> from untrusted tool output, the template doesn't escape them and a copied </tool_call> can add a call
  6. Message content must be a string, flatten content-part arrays first
  7. Recursive's SGLang servers listen on 0.0.0.0 with no key, publish the port on localhost only or pass --api-key

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct or Recursive Flint?

Recursive Flint scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct's 41.8 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct or Recursive Flint

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.