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

Recursive Flint vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

Recursive Flint scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next's 52.3 (D), 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

Which one, for what

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 60
  • Risk, 60 against 45
  • Agent interface, 90 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 40

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 1.8 out of 5

Watch for

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

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next D

Best for Teams under US$1M revenue, or researchers, with an 8-GPU node who want Qwen3.8-Flash-Next with shorter thinking for coding and agent work.

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

Watch for

Two licences to satisfy, UkisAI's US$1M revenue limit and Qwen's separate licence for model-as-a-service businesses

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runRecursive FlintSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-NextEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257560Recursive Flint +15
Risk20%206045Recursive Flint +15
Agent interface10%109060Recursive Flint +30
Documentation and upkeep10%106740Recursive Flint +27
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100D 52.3/100

Facts side by side

FactRecursive FlintSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorRecursiveUkisAI
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, plus the Qwen Community License 1.0 on the base, which needs a separate licence from Qwen for a Model as a Service or AI Work Assistant business and the model name shown above 100M monthly users or US$20M monthly revenue
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-212026-09-24
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 reviews3.5/5 (4)1.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

A large mixture-of-experts cousin, Qwen3.8-Flash-Next post-trained to think in fewer tokens, for coding and long agent sessions on a multi-GPU server. Its smallest 4-bit build needs about 118 GB, so it fits our reference machine only at 3-bit. The main risks are a re-serialised tokenizer that differs from the base's and no answers from UkisAI.

Before you call either

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

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

  1. On a multi-GPU node use vllm serve ukisai/Swift1.5-Qwen3.8-Flash-Next --tensor-parallel-size 8 --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, the parser the base's recipes and the card's SGLang command use
  2. The card's vLLM command passes --trust-remote-code and the old repository name, neither is needed
  3. On our reference machine only UkisAI's GSQ-RCO IQ3_S GGUF (84.7 GB with the projector) fits, below 4-bit
  4. Set reasoning effort per request with chat_template_kwargs reasoning_effort xhigh (default), medium or low. UkisAI's own runs lose about 2.5 points at medium and low
  5. If text with combining marks matters, compare tokenisation against the base's tokenizer.json before trusting outputs
  6. Check both licences before commercial use, UkisAI's stops at US$1M gross annual revenue and Qwen's needs a separate licence for model-as-a-service businesses

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Recursive Flint or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next?

Recursive Flint scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next's 52.3 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Recursive Flint or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

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