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

Ripple-65B Preview vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Ripple-65B Preview leads on risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep. 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

Ripple-65B Preview D

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.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Agent interface, 75 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 49 against 43

Watch for

No released runtime runs the architecture, so running it means Ricursive's Python in SGLang 0.5.19 or Transformers' remote code

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B C

Best for Agents on a 24 to 32 GB GPU or Mac that want Qwen3.8-27B's skills with shorter thinking, for teams under US$1M revenue or research.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 80 against 45

Watch for

Commercial use above US$1M gross annual revenue needs a separate licence

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 Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +35

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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B 80

Memory 25 of 30, UkisAI's 4-bit MLX build is 15.9 GB and its 4-bit GGUF with the vision projector 16.4 GB, both under 20 GB with a fifth added, which fits 24 GB. Runtimes 20, the architecture is Qwen3.8-27B's, which released llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers run, while Ollama's entry is the base's. Builds 15, GGUF, INT4, NVFP4, FP8 and MLX builds from UkisAI. Terms 10, a custom licence that is free for commercial use below US$1M revenue. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, no provider serves it, and UkisAI's research API on the card couldn't be shown to serve it, since robots.txt disallows calling it.

Agent interface Ripple-65B Preview +15

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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B 60

Chat template 20, the base's Jinja file. Tool-calling format 10 of 25, the format is only in the template and the parser only in serving commands. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic post-training. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the card mentions reasoning_effort but not how to set it, turn thinking off or read the reasoning. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

Documentation and upkeep Ripple-65B Preview +6

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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B 43

Model card 8 of 20, intended use, parameters and context only. Training data 5, a general description with no cut-off. Last change 20, UkisAI's own ONNX builds of the model took a new card and licence on 8 October, 26 days ago (the main repository's last commit is the 3 October README update). Responsiveness 0, UkisAI answered none of 8 discussions. Version policy 5, Swift 1.0 stays in its own repository without a note. File health 5, reports of a broken model wait without a reply and the card's metadata claims a gate that doesn't exist.

Risk Ripple-65B Preview +5

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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B 50

File safety 25, safetensors only and nothing from the repository runs. Provenance 15, the files are in the account UkisAI's site links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 10, a revenue threshold. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw was found.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runRipple-65B PreviewSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254580Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +35
Risk20%205550Ripple-65B Preview +5
Agent interface10%107560Ripple-65B Preview +15
Documentation and upkeep10%104943Ripple-65B Preview +6
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 53.3/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactRipple-65B PreviewSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorRicursive IntelligenceUkisAI
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 with a separate Swift Enterprise License above it. Built on Qwen3.8-27B, whose Apache 2.0 still governs the base
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-042026-09-24
Terms last updatednot read yetno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetnot found in the text
Agent reviewsnone2.3/5 (4)

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.

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

A Qwen3.8-27B cousin post-trained to think in fewer tokens, for coding and agent work with images in, that fits a 24 GB machine with UkisAI's own 4-bit builds. Commercial use is free only below US$1M revenue. The main risks are that nobody at UkisAI answers its discussions, and that the shorter thinking rests on UkisAI's own benchmarks.

Before you call either

Ripple-65B Preview

  1. Run Ricursive's launcher from inference/server with uv run --script serve.py on two B200 GPUs; it listens on 127.0.0.1:30000 with a 16K context by default
  2. The launcher turns on --reasoning-parser ripple and --tool-call-parser ripple; without them tool calls come back as raw text inside tool_call tags
  3. For tool_choice: "required" set strict: true and additionalProperties: false on each function, which the README says stopped extra argument fields
  4. Leave room in max_tokens for reasoning as well as the answer, since thinking is always on
  5. Use chat_template.jinja, not the template inside tokenizer_config.json, which has no tool support

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

  1. Quickest start is llama-server -hf ukisai/Swift-1.5-Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, about 18.4 GB with the vision projector
  2. On our reference machine BF16 fits, vllm serve ukisai/Swift-1.5-Qwen3.8-27b --max-model-len 262144 --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. The template is Qwen3.8-27B's, so chat_template_kwargs with reasoning_effort low, medium or xhigh (default) and enable_thinking false work as on the base
  4. UkisAI benchmarked it at temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20 and presence_penalty 0, which is a reasonable starting point
  5. The MLX 4-bit build needs UkisAI's patched MLX-LM and has no image or video chat
  6. Check the licence before commercial use, it stops at US$1M gross annual revenue including affiliates
  7. MTP self-speculative decoding is available with the base's head, flags on the card

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Ripple-65B Preview or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B?

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Ripple-65B Preview leads on risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Ripple-65B Preview or Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B

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