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

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct vs SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct scores 58 (C) on agent readiness against SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview's 46.8 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview 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 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct C

Best for An agent with 24 GB or more to spare that wants a local reader of images, documents and video with 262,144 tokens of context

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 40
  • Risk, 55 against 50

Watch for

No safety evaluation, agent-use guidance or security contact

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview D

Best for Researchers who want to study or fine-tune a looped transformer, more than agents that need a model to call today

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 44 against 36

Watch for

No released runtime runs it. vLLM and SGLang need unmerged pull requests

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.

Reach Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct +55

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct 95

Alibaba's own Q4_K_M GGUF is 18.6 GB, so with a fifth added it needs about 22 GB, or 23 GB with the vision file, and fits 24 GB (25). Transformers 4.57.0, vLLM 0.11.0, SGLang 0.5.4, llama.cpp and Ollama all run it in released versions, which reaches the 25 cap. Alibaba publishes FP8 and GGUF builds at Q8_0 and Q4_K_M (15). Apache 2.0 with nothing added (15). No gate and no account (10). Novita, Featherless AI and DeepInfra serve it on Hugging Face, and SiliconFlow too on OpenRouter (5). 25 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 95.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview 40

Memory 15, the only build is the safetensors set, 38.14 GB with its MTP head, since the Hub counts 9.41B of its parameters in F32. Runtimes 0, none of the six runs it in a released version. Builds 0, SenseNova publishes one set of weights and no quantised build. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata and on the card, which links the LICENSE in the GitHub repository, and nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and the card names no API that serves it. 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 40.

Documentation and upkeep SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview +8

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct 36

The card misses limitations, languages and a cut-off (11). Training data is described only in the technical report, with no cut-off (5). The newest Hub commit is the library-tag commit of 26 November 2025 and the weights haven't changed since September 2025, so the qwen-vl-utils fix of 4 January 2026 in the code that runs it sets the line, within a year (5). Qwen answered none of the eight Hugging Face discussions that aren't pull requests (0), and GitHub issues weren't counted. Earlier versions kept in their own repositories without notes (5). Config, template and card agree and no broken-file report waits (10). 11 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 36.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview 44

Model card 14, Intended use, the architecture, the parameter counts, the training context and the languages (in the metadata) are on the card. Training data 5, one general sentence on the recipes, with no sources, sizes or cut-off. Last change 20, the last commit, on 2 November 2026, reworked the speculative decoding section of the card, 8 days before this check. Responsiveness 0, none of the 5 discussions that aren't pull requests (30 October to 9 November 2026) has a reply from a sensenova member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, A first release, labelled a preview, with dated news on the card. File health 0, the files contradict the card on precision. 14 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 0 = 44.

Risk Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct +5

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct 55

Safetensors and GGUF only and no code in the repositories, so the FP8 card's trust_remote_code flag runs nothing (25). Files in the Qwen organisation with a checksum on every file (15). No safety evaluation (0). No guidance for agent use, which matters for a model sold as a GUI agent (0). Apache 2.0 carries none of the licence risks (15). No security contact, disclosure policy or public advisories found for Qwen (0), and Alibaba's group-wide security centre wasn't checked.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview 50

File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, the files sit in the sensenova organisation, which the GitHub repository for the model links to (10), and the Hub gives a SHA-256 for the large files (5). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on instructions inside tool results or images. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with no use policy, no threshold and no right to change the terms. Security programme 5, SenseTime's about page gives a security contact (5). 15 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 50.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runQwen3-VL-30B-A3B-InstructSenseNova-Loop-9B-PreviewEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259540Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct +55
Risk20%205550Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct +5
Agent interface10%106060even
Documentation and upkeep10%103644SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview +8
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 58/100D 46.8/100

Facts side by side

FactQwen3-VL-30B-A3B-InstructSenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorAlibaba (Qwen team)SenseTime (SenseNova)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2025-11-012026-11-02
Terms last updatedno document linkednot read yet
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews3/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct

A vision-language mixture of experts for screenshots, documents, charts and video, with about 3B of its 31B parameters active. Alibaba's Q4_K_M GGUF with its vision file needs about 23 GB, it loads in Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Ollama under Apache 2.0, and three providers host it. No safety work is published, so add guardrails before it drives a GUI.

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview

An unusual architecture under Apache 2.0, with a 256K training context, a thinking switch and tool calling in the template. It's a preview in practice too: no released runtime runs it, loading it runs the repository's code, the files are twice the size the card implies, and nobody from SenseNova has answered a question yet.

Before you call either

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf Qwen/Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 32768, or ollama run qwen3-vl:30b-a3b-instruct
  2. In Ollama the plain qwen3-vl:30b tag is the Thinking edition, so name 30b-a3b-instruct
  3. With the GGUF, load the mmproj vision file too, or images won't be read
  4. Parse tool calls as JSON inside <tool_call> tags, or use SGLang's --tool-call-parser qwen
  5. Use the shipped sampling, temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8 and top_k 20, from generation_config.json
  6. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  7. vLLM needs 0.11.0 or later, Transformers 4.57.0 or later and llama.cpp b6907 or later

SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview

  1. Read modeling_sensenova_loop.py before you load it. trust_remote_code runs it
  2. Pin transformers 5.18.0, the version the card checked
  3. Load with dtype=torch.bfloat16 as the card does, or the 38 GB of F32 weights stay at full size
  4. Pass enable_thinking=False to apply_chat_template for a direct answer
  5. Tool calls come back as tool_call blocks with function and parameter tags. Parse them yourself, since no runtime ships a parser
  6. Wait for the vLLM or SGLang pull request to land in a release before putting it behind an API

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct or SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview?

Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct scores 58 (C) on agent readiness against SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview's 46.8 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview leads on documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct or SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview

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