Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Ripple-65B Preview vs SmolLM3-3B
SmolLM3-3B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (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 3674 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Teams with Blackwell GPUs or a DGX Spark who want an Apache 2.0 coding model to try for terminal and agentic coding work, and can run the publisher's code to serve it.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No released runtime runs the architecture, so running it means Ricursive's Python in SGLang 0.5.19 or Transformers' remote code
Best for Agents that want a small, fully transparent tool-calling cousin on a laptop, CPU or edge device
Ahead on
- Reach, 85 against 45
- Risk, 65 against 55
- Agent interface, 80 against 75
- Documentation and upkeep, 74 against 49
Watch for
65,536 tokens trained; 131,072 needs a YaRN edit to config.json
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 SmolLM3-3B +40
Ripple-65B Preview 45
Memory 10 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Ricursive's NVFP4 at 57.2 GB, 68.7 GB with a fifth added, which is over 64 GB and fits our reference machine. Runtimes 0, no released runtime runs the ricursive architecture with its own code; Ricursive's SGLang plugin and Transformers' remote code don't count. Builds 10, one quantised precision (NVFP4) from Ricursive. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, Ricursive serves no API, Hugging Face maps no provider, Together AI's page says coming soon, and GMI Cloud's and OpenRouter's pages weren't read.
SmolLM3-3B 85
Memory 30, the smallest 4-bit build Hugging Face publishes is its own ONNX q4f16 at 2.1 GB, about 2.5 GB with the fifth added, and the full BF16 files that the counted runtimes load come to about 7.4 GB, both under 16 GB. Runtimes 20, released Transformers carries the model code, llama.cpp knows the architecture, and vLLM and SGLang run it through their Transformers backends in released versions; Ollama has no library entry and LM Studio's catalogue has none, so those two earn nothing. Builds 10, Hugging Face's ONNX repository has 4-bit builds, one of the checklist's kinds, and int8 builds, which are neither FP8 nor GGUF. They run in ONNX Runtime and Transformers.js rather than the runtimes above. Terms 15, plain Apache 2.0, scored by its terms since the repository holds no LICENSE file. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, no inference provider is listed for it on the Hub and none of the provider lists checked carries it.
Documentation and upkeep SmolLM3-3B +25
Ripple-65B Preview 49
Model card 14 of 20, no limitations and no knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a general description with token counts and no cut-off. Last change 20, released today. Responsiveness 0, no discussions yet, read as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release, with the NVFP4 checkpoint replaced in place on release day under a commit note. File health 5, tokenizer_config.json carries a second, tool-less chat template and a 131,072-token limit against the card's 1M.
SmolLM3-3B 74
Model card 14, it covers limitations, architecture, parameters, context and languages but has no intended-use section and leaves the June 2025 cut-off to the chat template. Training data 20, the datasets, mixture weights and post-training set are published with sources and sizes. Last change 20, Hugging Face's ONNX build changed its tokenizer config on 28 October 2026, though the main repository hasn't changed since 10 September 2025. Responsiveness 10, staff answered 14 of 36 discussions, none since November 2025. Version policy 5, a first release never replaced, with no dated notes. File health 5, template and tokenizer reports wait with no reply.
Risk SmolLM3-3B +10
Ripple-65B Preview 55
File safety 15, safetensors only, less 10 because the documented way to run it loads Ricursive's Python. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation ricursive.com links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 10, Ricursive's own FORTRESS and StrongREJECT results. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw.
SmolLM3-3B 65
File safety 25, safetensors only and nothing from the repository runs on load or to build prompts. Provenance 15, the HuggingFaceTB organisation linked from Hugging Face's launch post, with a SHA-256 for each shard. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 5, only the general cautions in the card's Limitations section. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added and a working licence link. Security programme 5, huggingface.co has a valid security.txt and Transformers has a security policy; whether advisories are handled in public couldn't be checked from our session, so that half is scored as absent.
Agent interface SmolLM3-3B +5
Ripple-65B Preview 75
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Ricursive's server README says how tools are declared and calls come back, with the ripple parser in SGLang 0.5.19. Trained tool calling 20, one or more calls a turn and agentic-coding RL. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the template has no thinking switch or effort levels. Context 10, long-context training at 2M-token sequences for a stated 1M.
SmolLM3-3B 80
Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, the card says how tools are declared, how calls come back and which vLLM parser to use. Trained tool calling 20, the template invites one or more calls per turn, each in its own block. Structured output 0, nothing documents asking the weights for JSON. Reasoning control 10, thinking turns off per request through the kwarg or a system-prompt flag, and the reasoning comes back in think tags. Context 5, trained at 65,536 tokens, with 131,072 only through YaRN.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Ripple-65B Preview | SmolLM3-3B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 45 | 85 | SmolLM3-3B +40 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 65 | SmolLM3-3B +10 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 75 | 80 | SmolLM3-3B +5 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 49 | 74 | SmolLM3-3B +25 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | D 53.3/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Ripple-65B Preview | SmolLM3-3B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Ricursive Intelligence | Hugging Face |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2025-09-10 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.3/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Ripple-65B Preview
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Ripple-65B Preview
A dense 65B coding model from a new lab, pretrained from scratch and released today under Apache 2.0, that Ricursive says leads U.S. open-weight models on Terminal-Bench 2.1. Nobody has checked that yet, and the custom architecture runs only through Ricursive's own SGLang plugin on Blackwell GPUs, with a 57 GB NVFP4 build as the smallest.
SmolLM3-3B
A tiny, fully open cousin with documented tool calling and switchable thinking, for local subtasks and routing on laptops and CPUs. It needs about 8 GB in BF16, or under 3 GB in Hugging Face's 4-bit ONNX build. The main risks are a 64K native context, no safety results and no staff reply in its discussions since November 2025.
Before you call either
Ripple-65B Preview
- Run Ricursive's launcher from inference/server with
uv run --script serve.pyon two B200 GPUs; it listens on 127.0.0.1:30000 with a 16K context by default - The launcher turns on
--reasoning-parser rippleand--tool-call-parser ripple; without them tool calls come back as raw text inside tool_call tags - For
tool_choice: "required"setstrict: trueandadditionalProperties: falseon each function, which the README says stopped extra argument fields - Leave room in
max_tokensfor reasoning as well as the answer, since thinking is always on - Use chat_template.jinja, not the template inside tokenizer_config.json, which has no tool support
SmolLM3-3B
- Start it with
vllm serve HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM3-3B --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser=hermes, or tool calls come back as text - Pass
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingfalse for short tasks, since thinking is on by default; a/thinkor/no_thinkflag in the system prompt overrides the kwarg - Put earlier tool calls in the assistant message content, since the template ignores a
tool_callsfield when it renders history - Add the YaRN
rope_scalingblock (factor 2.0, original 65536) to config.json before sending more than 65,536 tokens - Use temperature 0.6 and top_p 0.95, the card's recommended sampling
- Needs Transformers v4.53.0 or later; for llama.cpp use a GGUF from ggml-org or another converter, since Hugging Face publishes none
- Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Ripple-65B Preview or SmolLM3-3B?
SmolLM3-3B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in every scored category.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/ripple-65b-preview-vs-smollm3-3b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/ripple-65b-preview.json·/api/v1/tools/smollm3-3b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare ripple-65b-preview smollm3-3b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "ripple-65b-preview", "b": "smollm3-3b"}at/mcp, no key