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

Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct's 41.8 (E), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct leads on risk. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

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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

Ahead on

  • Risk, 55 against 50

Watch for

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

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 55
  • Documentation and upkeep, 43 against 26

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runQwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-InstructSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255580Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +25
Risk20%205550Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct +5
Agent interface10%106060even
Documentation and upkeep10%102643Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +17
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 41.8/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactQwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-InstructSwift 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 release2025-09-222026-09-24
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 reviews2/5 (4)2.3/5 (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.

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-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

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-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B?

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct's 41.8 (E), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct leads on risk.

Other comparisons with Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

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