Kolibri review
A free German model, 78B in size but only about 3.5B at work per word, built to run on company servers.
A free model from Germany, licensed for business use, that companies can run on their own servers. Excellent at math and German and cheap to run for its size, but weaker at long tool use and coding agents.
What is Kolibri?
Kolibri (Kolibri 1) is a free AI model from the German company Aleph Alpha, released on 3 October 2026. It works in English and German and is built for governments and regulated companies that must keep data on their own servers. It is 78 billion parameters in size, but only about 3.5 billion work on each word, which makes it cheap to run.
Key features
- Free to download and use, including for business (Apache 2.0 license)
- English and German, with about a fifth of its training in German
- Top math scores: 96% on AIME 2026
- Reads up to 1 million tokens, best kept to about 262,000
- Built to say "I don't know" when the answer is not in its sources
Specs and price
| Made by | Aleph Alpha (Germany) |
| Released | 3 Oct 2026 |
| Size | 78B parameters, about 3.46B at work per word |
| License | Apache 2.0: free, business use allowed |
| Languages | English and German |
| How much it can read | Up to 1,048,576 tokens (trained up to 262,144) |
| Knows events up to | 18 June 2026 |
| Computer needed | About 78 GB of GPU memory, for example 2x A100 80GB or 1x H200 |
| Download | Hugging Face, Aleph-Alpha/Kolibri-1 |
| Hosted API | No price published yet |
Test scores
| Test | Score | Published by |
|---|---|---|
| AIME 2026Math competition | 96% (Qwen3.6 35B: 91%) | Aleph Alpha |
| GPQA DiamondHard science questions | 84.3% (Qwen3.6 35B: 83.4%) | Aleph Alpha |
| SWE-bench VerifiedFixing real code bugs | 66.4 | Aleph Alpha |
| MMLU-ProGeneral knowledge | 80% (Qwen3.6 35B: 84.3%) | Aleph Alpha |
| Tau3-Bench (banking)Customer service agent tasks | 38.1% (Qwen3.6 35B: 10.6%) | Aleph Alpha |
Scores published by Aleph Alpha are the maker's own numbers. We will add our own results in the hands-on review.
How to download and run Kolibri
- Download the model from Hugging Face:
Aleph-Alpha/Kolibri-1. - Run it with vLLM plus Aleph Alpha's
aleph-alpha-inferenceplugin, from pip or as a container image. - Use a server with about 78 GB of GPU memory, such as 2x A100 80GB or 1x H200. It will not run on a normal laptop.
- Keep the context at 262,144 tokens or less unless you have tested longer.
Who it is for
Good fit
- European companies and public bodies that need data to stay in-house
- Teams working in German
- Math and reasoning-heavy work
Skip it if
- Laptop users: it needs a GPU server
- Coding agents and long tool use: Qwen3.6 does better
Pros and cons
Pros
- Free, with a business-friendly license
- Strong German and math
- Cheap to run for its size
- EU AI Act documentation published
Cons
- Needs about 78 GB of GPU memory
- Text only, no images
- Weaker general knowledge and long tool use than Qwen3.6
- Aleph Alpha is merging with Cohere, so the brand's future is unclear
How it compares
Against Qwen3.6 35B, a popular free model, Kolibri wins on math, hard science and banking-agent tests, and loses on general knowledge and tool calling (BFCL v4: 61.4% against 67.2%).
Hands-on review In testing
We are running Kolibri on real tasks. Results will be added to this page, at the same address.
How it got here
| Date | What happened | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 5, 2026 | First reviews: strong math and German, weaker long tool use.DataCamp, Kolibri 1 explained | News report |
| Oct 3, 2026 | Kolibri released on Hugging Face under Apache 2.0.Aleph Alpha, Kolibri has landed (3 Oct 2026) | Confirmed |
Frequently asked questions
What is Kolibri?
A free AI model from the German company Aleph Alpha, released on 3 October 2026, for English and German.
Is Kolibri free?
Yes. It is released under Apache 2.0, so you can download it and use it for free, including in business. You only pay for the computers that run it.
Can I run Kolibri on my computer?
Not on a normal laptop. It needs about 78 GB of GPU memory, for example two A100 80GB cards or one H200.
Is Kolibri good at German?
Yes. About a fifth of its training data is German, and Aleph Alpha built it for German-language work.
Where can I download Kolibri?
From Hugging Face, at Aleph-Alpha/Kolibri-1.
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