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

Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct vs ZAYA1-8B

ZAYA1-8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct's 52.6 (D), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct leads on reach. 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

Qwen3-VL-4B-InstructAlibaba (Qwen team) · Open-weight model D52.6/100#137 of 160 open-weight models ZAYA1-8BZyphra · Open-weight model C61/100#85 of 160 open-weight models

Which one, for what

Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct D

Best for An agent with 4 GB or more to spare that needs a local model to read images, documents and video

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 80

Watch for

No safety evaluation, agent-use guidance or security contact

ZAYA1-8B C

Best for People who want a small, fast reasoning model for maths and code and can live without tool calling

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 50 against 31

Watch for

Tool calling needs a parser that only Zyphra's vLLM fork has

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.

Documentation and upkeep ZAYA1-8B +19

Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct 31

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 last change to code that runs it was the qwen-vl-utils fix of 4 January 2026, and the weights haven't changed since November 2025 (5). Qwen answered none of the 14 Hugging Face discussions that aren't pull requests, counted on 4 November 2026 (0), and GitHub issues weren't counted. Earlier versions kept in their own repositories without notes (5). Two reports wait without a reply (5). 11+5+5+0+5+5 = 31.

ZAYA1-8B 50

Model card 5, Intended use and the parameter counts are on the card. Training data 0, Nothing on the card about the training data. Last change 10, the main repository last changed on 26 June 2026 (the checkpoint reshaped for Transformers), 137 days before this check, and the quantised repositories on 2 July, 131 days. Responsiveness 20, Of the 16 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (7 May to 14 August 2026), 10 have a reply from a Zyphra member, which is most. Version policy 5, the original checkpoint is kept as ZAYA1-8B-legacy and the card says so at the top, without a date. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture after the reshape. 5 + 0 + 10 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 50.

Reach Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct +15

Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct 95

Alibaba's own Q4_K_M GGUF with its vision file is 2.95 GB, so with a fifth added it needs about 3.5 GB and fits well within 16 GB (30). Transformers 4.57.0, vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp run it in released versions, and Ollama through its pinned llama.cpp build, which reaches the 25 cap (25). Alibaba publishes FP8 and GGUF builds at F16, Q8_0 and Q4_K_M (15). Apache 2.0 with nothing added (15). No gate and no account (10). Only Featherless is live in the Hub's provider mapping, so it isn't hosted too (0). 30+25+15+15+10+0 = 95.

ZAYA1-8B 80

Memory 30, the smallest build from Zyphra is the MXFP4-Experts repository, 5.85 GB, and 5.85 GB × 1.2 = 7.0 GB, within 16 GB. Runtimes 10, Released Transformers 5.22.2 has the zaya model and SGLang 0.5.23 has srt/models/zaya.py. Builds 15, Quantised builds from Zyphra at two precisions, FP8 and MXFP4 for the experts, each in its own repository. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata, an OSI licence with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the model and its builds 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. Zyphra's site lists a cloud product for its open models, which wasn't checked for this model. 30 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 80.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runQwen3-VL-4B-InstructZAYA1-8BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259580Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct +15
Risk20%205555even
Agent interface10%106060even
Documentation and upkeep10%103150ZAYA1-8B +19
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 52.6/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactQwen3-VL-4B-InstructZAYA1-8B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorAlibaba (Qwen team)Zyphra
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2025-11-012026-07-02
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct

Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct reads screenshots, documents, charts and video, and Alibaba's Q4_K_M GGUF needs about 3.5 GB. Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Ollama run it under plain Apache 2.0. It has no thinking mode, documents tool calls only in the template, and Qwen hasn't answered repository questions or published safety work, so add guardrails before it drives a GUI.

ZAYA1-8B

A small reasoning model trained from scratch by one lab, with a clean licence, 4-bit and FP8 builds and a team that answers questions. It's the hardest of the small models to run: its own architecture, a card that points at forks, and tool calling that needs a parser no release has. Little on limits, data or safety.

Before you call either

Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf Qwen/Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 32768, or ollama run qwen3-vl:4b-instruct
  2. In Ollama the plain qwen3-vl:4b tag is the Thinking edition, so name 4b-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 card's sampling, temperature=0.7, top_p=0.8, top_k=20, presence_penalty=1.5 for vision and temperature=1.0, top_p=1.0, top_k=40, presence_penalty=2.0 for text
  6. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  7. vLLM needs 0.11.0 or later and Transformers 4.57.0 or later

ZAYA1-8B

  1. Use it for reasoning, maths and code. Don't count on tool calling outside Zyphra's vLLM fork
  2. Run it with Transformers 5.22.2 or SGLang 0.5.23, which have the model built in
  3. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 in general, and temperature 0.6 for agent and code work
  4. Download Zyphra/ZAYA1-8B, not the legacy repository, for the released runtimes
  5. The quantised repositories have no licence tag. The main one is Apache 2.0

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct or ZAYA1-8B?

ZAYA1-8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct's 52.6 (D), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct or ZAYA1-8B

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