Is stable-code-3b or Qwen3-4B smaller?

stable-code-3b is smaller at Q4_K_M: 1.59 GiB against 2.33 GiB.

Which uses less memory at long context?

Qwen3-4B — its KV cache at 32K context is 2.2x smaller, because of how its attention layers cache.

Model comparison

stable-code-3b vs Qwen3-4B

At Q4_K_M, stable-code-3b is the smaller download — 1,708,595,200 bytes against 2,497,280,256. At long context the gap widens: Qwen3-4B's KV cache at 32K is 2.2× smaller, which usually matters more than the difference in weights.

From the file· summed bytes, KV per layer

Side by side

	stable-code-3b	Qwen3-4B
Parameters	2.8B	4.0B
Architecture	stablelm	qwen3
Layers	32	36
Native context	16,384	40,960
Mixture of experts	no	no
Quantizations published	48	29
Smallest quantization	0.63 GiB	1.01 GiB
Q4_K_M	1.59 GiB	2.33 GiB
Licence	other	—

KV cache by context

the term that decides long-context viability

Context	stable-code-3b	Qwen3-4B	Ratio
4,096	1.25 GiB	0.56 GiB	2.22×
8,192	2.50 GiB	1.13 GiB	2.22×
16,384	5.00 GiB	2.25 GiB	2.22×
32,768	10.00 GiB	4.50 GiB	2.22×
65,536	20.00 GiB	9.00 GiB	2.22×
131,072	40.00 GiB	18.00 GiB	2.22×