Field Guide · Week of 17 August 2026
Qwen 3.6 27B
Alibaba · China · Alibaba
The best open writer you can still keep on one machine. Multilingual. Apache. The download numbers this week are enormous.
- Where it runs
- Runs on your computer
- Memory
- 16–24 GB (4-bit ~17 GB)
- Size
- 27B dense
- License
- Apache 2.0
Why it is on this week’s list
If we had to pick one non-US model for a 24 GB laptop, it is this. Strong at code and long notes.
Use it when
A 16–32 GB machine and work in more than one language.
Skip it when
8 GB, or a policy that forbids Chinese-origin weights.
Published scores
Scores as of 17 August 2026. A blank test is not a zero. We just will not invent it.
- GPQA Diamond
- 87.8
- SWE-Bench Verified
- 77.2
- LiveCodeBench
- 83.9
- MMLU / MMLU-Pro
- 84.0
- AIME
- —
- Humanity’s Last Exam
- —
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MMLU, not Pro.
No public number we will stand behind.
No public number we will stand behind.