Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic vs Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking
Side-by-side comparison of VRAM requirements, quantization, context length, and hardware compatibility.
Specifications
| Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic | Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking | |
|---|---|---|
| Parameters | 4.5B | 4.2B |
| Context | 262K | 262K |
| Architecture | Qwen3_5ForConditionalGeneration | Qwen3_5ForConditionalGeneration |
| License | lgpl-3.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Downloads | 1.4K | 2.8K |
| Released | Mar 2026 | Mar 2026 |
VRAM by Quantization: Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic vs Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking
| Quantization | Bits | Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic VRAM | Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking VRAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q2_K | 3.40 | 2.4 GB | 2.3 GB |
| Q3_K_L | 4.10 | 2.8 GB | 2.6 GB |
| Q3_K_M | 3.90 | 2.7 GB | 2.5 GB |
| Q3_K_S | 3.50 | 2.5 GB | 2.3 GB |
| Q4_K_M | 4.80 | 3.2 GB | 3.0 GB |
| Q4_K_S | 4.50 | 3.0 GB | 2.8 GB |
| Q5_K_M | 5.70 | 3.7 GB | 3.5 GB |
| Q5_K_S | 5.50 | 3.6 GB | 3.4 GB |
| Q6_K | 6.60 | 4.2 GB | 3.9 GB |
| Q8_0 | 8.00 | 5.0 GB | 4.7 GB |
Verdict
Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking needs less VRAM at Q4_K_M (3.0 GB vs 3.2 GB), so it fits on smaller GPUs. Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking is the more widely downloaded of the two.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Which needs less VRAM, Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic or Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking?
At Q4_K_M, Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic needs 3.2 GB and Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking needs 3.0 GB, so Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking is the lighter option to run locally.
- Which has a longer context window, Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic or Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking?
Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic supports 262,144 tokens and Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking supports 262,144 tokens.
- What is the difference between Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic and Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking?
Qwen3.5 4B Claude Opus 4.6 Distilled Heretic is a 4.5B model from ghost-actual (Qwen family), while Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking is a 4.2B model from MerlinSafety (Qwen family). Compare their VRAM requirements above to see which fits your GPU or Mac.