# Ripple-65B Preview vs SmolLM3-3B (slim)

> SmolLM3-3B scores 61 (C) to Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ripple-65b-preview-vs-smollm3-3b.md (~7,850 tokens) · this version ~1,680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ripple-65b-preview-vs-smollm3-3b.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ripple-65b-preview-vs-smollm3-3b
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-04
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

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.

- Ripple-65B Preview: D 53.3, rank #103 of 121 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ripple-65b-preview.min.md
- SmolLM3-3B: C 61, rank #55 of 121 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/smollm3-3b.min.md
- Ripple-65B Preview, good 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.
- SmolLM3-3B, good 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.

| Category | Ripple-65B Preview | SmolLM3-3B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 45 | 85 |
| Risk (20%) | 55 | 65 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 75 | 80 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 49 | 74 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Ripple-65B Preview | SmolLM3-3B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Ricursive Intelligence | Hugging Face |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2025-09-10 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- 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.)