BudHist Benchmark: Testing the Knowledge of Buddhist History in Open-Weight LLMs An ongoing open-weight LLM benchmark project, BudHist, reports that qwen3.6:35b leads tested local open-weight models on Buddhist history multiple-choice questions with 210/250 (84%), while cloud-based open-weight models glm-5.2 (238/250, 95%) and minimax-m3 top the cloud tier, with deepseek-v4-pro (232/250, 93%) and gemini-3.6-flash (233/250, 93%) close behind. The project runs four-option multiple-choice tests over a growing dataset — 150 questions in the 2025-10 test, 210 in 2026-04 and 250 in 2026-08 — using Ollama for local experiments and OpenRouter for cloud tests. The authors state that at roughly 94% the best open-weight cloud models have essentially saturated the benchmark, and that closed reference models perform in the same range. This ongoing project aims to develop datasets and best practices to test the knowledge of language models in the domain of Buddhist history. The focus is on open-weights models. Local, open-weights models are important for researchers because they allow researchers full control over their experiments. Experiments are repeatable without restrictions and the models can be archived without constraints. We use a growing dataset of four-options multiple choice questions regarding different periods of Buddhist history. Currently, Ollama https://ollama.com/ is used as middle-ware for the local experiments, OpenRouter https://openrouter.ai/ for the cloud-based tests. The aim of the project is to: As of , among the tested local open-weight models qwen3.6:35b 'knows' most about Buddhist history. Among the tested cloud-based open-weights models glm-5.2 and minimax-m3 are best, but with deepseek-v4-pro and gemini-3.6-flash tied close behind. With that ~94% the best open-weight, cloud-based models have basically saturated the benchmark. The closed, non-open-weights models we included as reference perform in the same ball park. April 2026 - now | Model | Test 2025-10 150 questions | Test 2026-04 210 questions | Test 2026-08 250 questions | |---|---|---|---| | Local | | | | | deepseek-r1:14b | | 128/210 61% | | | gemma2:9b | 81/150 54% | | | | gemma3:4b | 60/150 40% | | | | gemma3:12b | 93/150 62% | 134/210 64% | 171/250 68% | | gemma3:27b | 96/150 64% | 139/210 66% | | | gemma4:e4b | | 121/210 58% | | | gemma4:31b | | 159/210 76% | 198/250 79% | | glm-4.7-flash:q4 K M latest | | 158/210 75% | 176/250 70% | | laguna-xs-2.1:q4 K M | | | 146/250 58% | | llama3:8b | 84/150 56% | | | | llama3.1:8b | 85/150 57% | | | | llama4:16x17b | | X