# Nanbeige 3 Billion Parameter Model

> Source: <https://www.dotnetperls.com/2026_7_28_nanbeige-3-billion-parameter-model>
> Published: 2026-07-28 07:00:00+00:00

Now that I have written my Rust MCP server, I need a **local agent** to use it to **call tools** effectively. I found that various models including Gemma 4, Qwen 3.6 and Bonsai 27B can do this, but I tried a new model release called **Nanbeige 4.2**. This is a model from a Chinese company that seems to outperform other models of similar sizes.

Nanbeige is a Chinese word that means "bridging north and south" or something like that—it has no relation to the color beige. It uses a **looped transformer**, meaning it repeats the layers in the model, which means it may have closer to 6 billion parameters but they are compressed to 3 billion. It seems to be **slower** than other 3B models, and closer in speed to a 9B model.

For tool calling, I found that:

• Nanbeige is indeed well suited for calling tools—the claims it outperforms Gemma 4 12B at this may be justified.

• The model seems able to call my MCP and built-in `llama-cpp`

tools when needed.

• There is a parsing issue that means some tool calls are dropped.

Overall I was **impressed** with **Nanbeige**; it is not clear whether I will switch to it as my primary non-coding model, but it has potential. It is worth keeping an eye on future Nanbeige releases.