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

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B vs ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B and ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) leads on 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 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

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 75
  • Risk, 50 against 45

Watch for

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

ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) C

Best for Small teams and individuals running Qwen3.8-27B for agent or reasoning work who want shorter thinking traces on one 24 GB GPU or Mac.

Ahead on

  • Agent interface, 70 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 53 against 43

Watch for

PolyForm Small Business licence, free commercially only below 100 people and 1,000,000 USD (2019) revenue

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27BThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258075Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +5
Risk20%205045Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B +5
Agent interface10%106070ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) +10
Documentation and upkeep10%104353ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) +10
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactSwift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27BThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorUkisAIBottleCap AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceSwift 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 basePolyForm-Small-Business-1.0.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-09-242026-10-06
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno 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 reviews2.3/5 (4)2.5/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)

A Qwen3.8-27B with shorter reasoning, for agent work where thinking tokens cost time, and BottleCap's 4-bit GGUF runs in about 19 GB. The main limits are the licence, which needs a paid licence above 100 people or 1,000,000 USD revenue, a gated main repository, and no safety results or training-data description.

Before you call either

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

ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)

  1. Check the licence first, an organisation with 100 or more people or 1,000,000 USD (2019) revenue needs a commercial licence from BottleCap
  2. For files without the gate use llama-server -hf bottlecapai/ThinkingCap-Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, about 17.4 GB
  3. On vLLM use --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_xml, and on SGLang --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  4. Set reasoning_effort (xhigh, medium or low) in chat_template_kwargs, any other value makes the template raise an error
  5. Keep the base's sampling (temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20), the GGUF card says greedy decoding can loop
  6. The GGUFs carry an MTP head, and llama.cpp builds without MTP support for this architecture may refuse to load them with a missing blk.64 tensor

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B or ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)?

Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B and ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B) leads on agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B or ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)

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