Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct

494M parameters, text in, text out, 32K tokens of context. 1 provider serves it.

Verified 2026-10-25 Rank #260 in LLMs · score 85.5 method v1 Sources 3 Downloads 30d 250.2k · #233 of 619 tracked

Can I run it?0.3GB at INT4Estimatefits a 16 GB cardmethod

Can I use it?Apache 2.0Permissive; patent grantlicence file2026-10-24

Do people use it?250.2kdownloads, 30 days#233 of 619 we track · top 38%+3 likes, downloads −8% this week212 likesHugging Face2026-10-24

Worth reading

Picked by rule from 9 tracked pieces: the lab's own post, the most shared, a field report, the latest.

Most discussed · 29 HN pts

Alibaba Qwen2.5-Omni-7B: Open Source End-to-End Multimodal AI Model

alizila.com 2025-03-27 29 HN pts · 3 comments about the Qwen2 family family

Latest · 2 years ago

Qwen2-Math

Qwen2-Math is a series of specialized math language models built upon the Qwen2 LLMs that significantly outperforms the mathematical capabilities of open-source models and even closed-source models.

The model series primarily supports English, with bilingual English and Chinese math models scheduled for release soon.
Evaluation of multi-choice benchmarks including MMLU STEM and GaoKao problems uses a 5-shot setting instead of zero-shot.

qwenlm.github.io 2024-08-08 128 HN pts · 38 comments 5.8k words about the Qwen2 family family

9 best of 9 tracked

The 2 picks above, plus these 7. Top is the radar's score: discussion, source authority and the lab's own posts, fading with age.

ArticleQwen2 LLM Releasedqwenlm.github.io · 2024-06-06 · 261 HN pts · official
CodeLlama.cpp Now Supports Qwen2-VL (Vision Language Model)github.com · 2024-12-14
ArticleAn Analysis of Chinese LLM Censorship and Bias with Qwen 2 Instructhuggingface.co · 2024-06-09 · 16 HN pts
ArticleQwen2.5-Max: The Next Leap in AI Innovationmedium.com · 2025-01-29 · 17 HN pts
ArticleArchitecture graph for Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct | hfviewerhfviewer.com · undated
ArticleQwen2 Technical Report — Paper Graphpaper-graph-ui.vercel.app · undated
ArticleQwen2 0.5B Instruct · Models · Dataloopdataloop.ai · undated

Show all 7

Where to run it

Live hosted endpoints, cheapest first, USD per million tokens. Ties break on output price, then provider name.

#	Cheapest live row	In /1M	Out /1M	Context	Quant	Seen
1	Featherless	—	—	—	—	Oct 25

All 1 provider →

Where it's used

Hugging Face does not say who downloads a model or with what. These are the proxies: API providers listing it, quantized builds, fine-tunes/adapters/merges, and Spaces that load it.

Served by 1 API provider; heavily run locally (93 quantized builds); a big base for builders (1,116 fine-tunes, adapters and merges).

As a service1Featherless
On own hardware93quantized builds
Built on1,116599 fine-tunes · 507 adapters · 10 merges
In apps100+Hugging Face Spaces

Top Spaces running it: Xenova/webgpu-chat-qwen2 ♥ 47 · gen6scp/sana-zero ♥ 38 · KwabsHug/GameConfigIdea ♥ 17 · nvidia/judges-verdict ♥ 14

Will it fit?

Weights only, an estimate: leave room for the KV cache. Method

Fits a 16 GB card at INT4

About 0.3 GB at INT4, 0.6 GB at FP8, 1.2 GB at BF16: weights only, so leave room for the KV cache.

Estimate params × bytes per param × 1.2 · how we estimate

The story so far

Weights, every dated article, and repo commits on one rail.

5 dated articles and 10 repo commits so far

Teal is the weights (2024-06-03), amber triangles are 5 dated articles (each links to it), grey ticks are repo commits.

What people built on it

1,209 derivatives on the Hub. Which build to run, by runtime: the most downloaded in each class.

1,209 derivatives on the Hub, led by 599 fine-tunes

From the Hugging Face model tree; quantized builds in teal, fine-tunes, merges and adapters in greys.

GGUF Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF for llama.cpp, Ollama, LM Studio 937.5k downloads AWQ Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-AWQ for vLLM, SGLang 113k downloads

All variants →

Reference

Everything else, folded: the full tables, every source.

Benchmarks

5 rows

Benchmarks 5 rows

measured third-party leaderboard rowauthor-reported number from the model card or eval files (5)No confidence intervals unless the source gave them; settings differ between rows, so compare within a benchmark, not across. Date = the benchmark's own date when it gives one, else when we read it.

Benchmark	Value	Setting / notes	Reported by	Date
author-reported C-Eval · Work across languages	45.2	Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	model author	2026-10-07
author-reported GSM8K · Reason through hard problems	40.1	Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	model author	2026-10-07
author-reported HumanEval · Write code with agents	17.1	Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	model author	2026-10-07
author-reported IFEval · Chat and follow instructions	20	Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	model author	2026-10-07
author-reported MMLU · Reason through hard problems	37.9	Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	model author	2026-10-07

Use-case evidence

5 use cases

What it is good at 5 use cases

Labels are evidence, not verdicts: measured a third-party leaderboard row for this model; author-reported a number the model author published in the card or eval files; structural a deterministic signal from the name, config or chat template, or a decision-model estimate. Each chip links to its source. All use cases.

Chat and follow instructionsauthor-reportedAuthor reports IFEval (Prompt Strict-Acc.) 20.0 decision-model estimate p=1.00 name: Instruct +2 more
Reason through hard problemsauthor-reportedAuthor reports MMLU 37.9 Author reports GSM8K 40.1
Write code with agentsauthor-reportedAuthor reports HumanEval 17.1
Work across languagesauthor-reportedAuthor reports C-Eval 45.2
Run on a laptop or phonestructuraldecision-model estimate p=1.00 name: 0.5B fits: edge

Facts

21 fields

Listed in LLMs

Facts

Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct has 494M parameters. (safetensors metadata, observed 2026-10-24)
Context length is 32,768 tokens (32K). (config.json max_position_embeddings, observed 2026-10-24)
License: Apache 2.0 (friction: none). Permissive; patent grant. (license file, observed 2026-10-24)
Created 2024-06-03, last modified 2024-08-21. (HF API, observed 2026-10-24)

Pipeline tag	text-generation
Library	transformers
Architectures	Qwen2ForCausalLM
Model type	qwen2
Dtype	bfloat16
Params by dtype	BF16: 494,032,768
Size band	S
MoE	no
Context length	32,768 (config.json max_position_embeddings)
Languages	en
License	Apache 2.0 (apache-2.0)
Hub snapshot	2026-10-25

Servability

vLLM · SGLang

Servability

vLLM: supported · Qwen2ForCausalLM · 7050ef881ff0835f6890a47db1859a24c65481d6SGLang: supported · Qwen2ForCausalLM · 773cb938fe9484a8f7e7e46fb1b1fe96412c59ed

vLLM registry (7050ef881ff0835f6890a47db1859a24c65481d6) · SGLang registry (773cb938fe9484a8f7e7e46fb1b1fe96412c59ed) · Matched by architecture class name against each project's registry on main; 'supported' means the architecture is registered, not that this checkpoint was tested.

Hardware fit

3 estimates

Hardware fit ESTIMATE

Weights-only memory for Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct: params × bytes/param × 1.2 overhead. KV cache and activations are extra. How this is computed.

BF16 (2 bytes/param)	1.2 GB · Edge (<4 GB)
FP8 (1 byte/param)	0.6 GB · Edge (<4 GB)
INT4 (0.5 bytes/param)	0.3 GB · Edge (<4 GB)

Weights only (params × bytes/param × 1.2 overhead); KV cache and activations extra.

All variants

40 variants

Lineage

Fine-tuned from Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B (same organization) Family: Qwen/Qwen2 1,209 derivatives on the Hub

Base model: Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B

merge: 10quantized: 93finetune: 599adapter: 507

Top variants (40 shown, ranked by downloads)

Variant	Relation	Quant	Params	Band	License	Author	Likes	Downloads
OpenGVLab/InternVL2-1B	merge	—	938M	S	mit	OpenGVLab	84	10.8M
Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	Qwen	82	937.5k
Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-AWQ	quantized	AWQ	630M	S	apache-2.0	Qwen	11	113k
gaianet/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	gaianet	1	99.1k
legraphista/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-IMat-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	legraphista	0	51.4k
mlc-ai/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-q4f16_1-MLC	quantized	—	—	—	—	mlc-ai	1	22.9k
Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GPTQ-Int4	quantized	GPTQ	630M	S	apache-2.0	Qwen	21	21.4k
lmstudio-community/Qwen2-500M-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	lmstudio-community	8	14.9k
second-state/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	second-state	0	10.9k
Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GPTQ-Int8	quantized	GPTQ	630M	S	apache-2.0	Qwen	9	10.4k
trl-lib/Qwen2-0.5B-Reward	finetune	—	494M	S	apache-2.0	trl-lib	1	9k
QuantFactory/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	QuantFactory	1	8.9k
mradermacher/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	mradermacher	0	8k
litert-community/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	quantized	—	—	—	apache-2.0	litert-community	1	5.7k
CHE-72-ZLab/Alibaba-Qwen2-0_5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	CHE-72-ZLab	0	4.2k
Bruno0208/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct-mate-q4_k_m.gguf	quantized	gguf	494M	S	apache-2.0	Bruno0208	0	4k
Omaratef3221/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-SQL-query-generator	finetune	—	494M	S	apache-2.0	Omaratef3221	2	3.3k
Felladrin/gguf-sharded-Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	quantized	gguf	—	—	apache-2.0	Felladrin	0	3.3k
afrideva/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	afrideva	1	3.2k
Felladrin/gguf-Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	quantized	gguf	—	—	apache-2.0	Felladrin	0	2.8k
arzaan789/qwen2-0.5b-uncensored	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	arzaan789	3	2.6k
Bojun-Feng/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF-llamafile	finetune	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	Bojun-Feng	0	2.5k
Zynerji/Ektome-Qwen2-0.5Bi-PristinelyUncensored	quantized	GGUF	494M	S	apache-2.0	Zynerji	0	2.3k
mlc-ai/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-q0f16-MLC	quantized	—	—	—	—	mlc-ai	0	2.3k
tensorblock/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	apache-2.0	tensorblock	0	2k
featherless-ai-quants/Qwen-Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-GGUF	quantized	GGUF	—	—	—	featherless-ai-quants	0	1.9k
ericlewis/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-xLAM-0.4.1	finetune	—	494M	S	apache-2.0	ericlewis	0	1.8k
trl-lib/Qwen2-0.5B-DPO	finetune	—	494M	S	—	trl-lib	4	1.5k
DireDreadlord/Dragon-1-0.5B	finetune	—	494M	S	apache-2.0	DireDreadlord	1	1.4k
OpenVINO/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-int4-ov	quantized	int4	—	—	apache-2.0	OpenVINO	1	1.3k
llmware/qwen2-0.5b-chat-ov	quantized	—	—	—	apache-2.0	llmware	1	1.3k
lakhera2023/devops-slm	finetune	—	494M	S	apache-2.0	lakhera2023	1	1.3k
mlc-ai/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-q4f16_0-MLC	quantized	—	—	—	—	mlc-ai	0	1.3k
QpiEImitation/gkd_math500_S-Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct_T-Qwen2-7B-Instruct	finetune	—	494M	S	—	QpiEImitation	0	1.3k
QpiEImitation/gkd_gsm8k_S-Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct_T-Qwen2-7B-Instruct	finetune	—	494M	S	—	QpiEImitation	0	1.3k
qgallouedec/online-dpo-qwen2-4	finetune	—	494M	S	—	qgallouedec	0	1.2k
trl-lib/Qwen2-0.5B-ORPO	finetune	—	494M	S	—	trl-lib	2	1.1k
QpiEImitation/opd_gsm8k_S-Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct_T-Qwen2-7B-Instruct	finetune	—	494M	S	—	QpiEImitation	0	1.1k
liodon-ai/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-imatrix-GGUF	quantized	imatrix	—	—	other	liodon-ai	0	1.1k
mlc-ai/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct-q0f32-MLC	quantized	—	—	—	—	mlc-ai	0	1.1k

Repository changelog

10 commits

Repository changelog 10 commits

Date	Commit	SHA
2024-08-21	Add base_model metadata (#10)	c540970
2024-06-06	update README.md	c291d6f
2024-06-06	Update README.md	197b20c
2024-06-06	update generation_config.json	bf61048
2024-06-06	Update config.json	b17b4f1
2024-06-05	Update README.md	5065733
2024-06-03	Create LICENSE	2a5861f
2024-06-03	Create README.md	24c7419
2024-06-03	Initial commit	befdd36
2024-06-03	initial commit	4e02a09

All providers

1 provider · 1 endpoint

Where to run 1 providers · 1 endpoints

Hosted endpoints observed for Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct, sorted by input price (USD per million tokens). Each row names its observer and date; prices change daily, so check the source before quoting.

Provider	Model ref	Context	Quant	$/M in	$/M out	tok/s	TTFT	Tools	Status	Observed
Featherless hf	Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	live	2026-10-25

Articles and coverage

9 pieces

Ranked by source signals (HN, Lobsters, authority domains, official posts) and recency. Summaries are generated from a stored copy of the article text; every sentence cites a span of that text, and nothing is shown that failed the citation check.

Official3

Qwen2 LLM Released

qwenlm.github.io2024-06-06officialauthorityHN front pageabout the Qwen2 familyHN 261 pts · 130 comments4,713 words

Alibaba releases Qwen2, a new series of open-source models featuring five sizes ranging from 0.5B to 72B parameters. The update applies Group Query Attention to all sizes and trains on data in 27 additional languages besides English and Chinese. Specific instruction-tuned versions like Qwen2-7B-Instruct and Qwen2-72B-Instruct support extended context lengths up to 128K tokens, while smaller models adopt the Apache 2.0 license and the largest retains the Qianwen License.written, reviewed, cited

Qwen2-57B-A14B disables tie embedding because large sparse embeddings consume a large proportion of total model parameters.
Instruction-tuned models require the Needle in a Haystack task to verify correct long-context understanding beyond perplexity evaluation.
The Qwen2-72B-Instruct model performs comparably to GPT-4 in safety tests across four categories of multilingual unsafe queries.

Qwen2-Math

qwenlm.github.io2024-08-08officialauthorityHN front pageabout the Qwen2 familyHN 128 pts · 38 comments5,833 words

Qwen2-Math is a series of specialized math language models built upon the Qwen2 LLMs that significantly outperforms the mathematical capabilities of open-source models and even closed-source models. The largest model, Qwen2-Math-72B-Instruct, is evaluated on benchmarks including GSM8K, Math, and MMLU-STEM using few-shot chain-of-thought prompting. Instruction tuning combines a dense reward signal with a binary signal via Rejection Sampling and reinforcement learning with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) after SFT.written, reviewed, cited

The model series primarily supports English, with bilingual English and Chinese math models scheduled for release soon.
Evaluation of multi-choice benchmarks including MMLU STEM and GaoKao problems uses a 5-shot setting instead of zero-shot.
Performance reporting for complex competition evaluations includes Greedy, Maj@64, RM@64, and RM@256 metrics.

An Analysis of Chinese LLM Censorship and Bias with Qwen 2 Instruct

huggingface.co2024-06-09authorityabout the Qwen2 familyHN 16 pts · 6 comments3,368 words

Qwen 2 Instruct models operate under an Apache 2.0 license but exhibit unique government-mandated alignment with significantly (>80%) fewer refusals in Chinese than English. The deccp dataset documents these behaviors, showing that responses to sensitive topics often include defensive nationalist propaganda or warnings rather than standard refusals. While the models are competitive on benchmarks, their output varies wildly in tone depending on the language used.written, reviewed, cited

Qwen2-72B-Instruct ranks just below Llama-3-70b-Instruct on the ChatArena Leaderboard several days after release.
The deccp dataset contains approximately 95 refusal questions used to evaluate Qwen2 Instructs censorship behavior.

Analysis5

Alibaba Qwen2.5-Omni-7B: Open Source End-to-End Multimodal AI Model

alizila.com2025-03-27about the Qwen2 familyHN 29 pts · 3 comments

Qwen2.5-Max: The Next Leap in AI Innovation

medium.com2025-01-29about the Qwen2 familyHN 17 pts · 4 comments

Architecture graph for Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct | hfviewer

hfviewer.com3,279 words

Qwen2 Technical Report — Paper Graph

paper-graph-ui.vercel.appabout the Qwen2 family

Qwen2 0.5B Instruct · Models · Dataloop

dataloop.ai

All coverage tracked for this model (9) — append-only, nothing is ever removed

Title	Source	Published	First seen	Signals
Architecture graph for Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct \| hfviewer	hfviewer.com	—	2026-10-07	exa
Qwen2 Technical Report — Paper Graph	paper-graph-ui.vercel.app	—	2026-10-07	exa
Qwen2 0.5B Instruct · Models · Dataloop	dataloop.ai	—	2026-10-07	exa
Alibaba Qwen2.5-Omni-7B: Open Source End-to-End Multimodal AI Model	alizila.com	2025-03-27	2026-10-07	hn
Qwen2.5-Max: The Next Leap in AI Innovation	medium.com	2025-01-29	2026-10-07	hn
Llama.cpp Now Supports Qwen2-VL (Vision Language Model)	github.com	2024-12-14	2026-10-07	hn
Qwen2-Math	qwenlm.github.io official	2024-08-08	2026-10-07	hn
An Analysis of Chinese LLM Censorship and Bias with Qwen 2 Instruct	huggingface.co	2024-06-09	2026-10-07	hn
Qwen2 LLM Released	qwenlm.github.io official	2024-06-06	2026-10-07	hn

Similar models

3 models

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Qwen2.5-0.5B · 494M
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Qwen2.5-Coder-0.5B-Instruct · 494M
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Sources

3 sources

Sources

Hub snapshot: 2026-10-25 · HF API: 2026-10-24 21:37 UTC · Providers: 2026-10-24 21:44 UTC · Articles: 2026-10-24 21:45 UTC · Summary: 2026-10-07 15:07 UTC · Last verified 2026-10-25

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