Needle 3
Needle 3 is available now for agents, classification, and json / tool use with open-source; evaluate it while provider pricing coverage matures.
Use it for
- Teams evaluating agents, classification, and json / tool use
- Workloads that can use a 8k context window
Do not use it for
- Cost-sensitive launches that need sourced token pricing
- Vision or document-understanding workloads
- Teams that need a tracked hosted API route today
- Family
- Needle
- Released
- 2026-09-17
- Context
- 8k
- Parameters
- 121M
- Specialization
- on-device
- Openness
- Open source
- License
- Apache 2.0OSI-approvedCommercial use: permitted
- Weights
- Available
- Code
- Unknown
- Training
- Pretrained
Cactus Compute, Inc. builds automation foundation models for tiny devices (mobiles, wearables, smart home, robots, micro
WebsiteNo tracked provider token pricing is available yet.
About
Needle 3 is Cactus Compute's sliceable automation foundation model for tiny devices, announced 2026-09-17 (MCP-verified @cactuscompute tip 2100685924401295764 + first-party /needle). One set of weights; every depth from 2 to 20 layers is its own deployable model (intelligence ladder). Params ~25–121M at CQ2-bit (2L ~25M, 4L ~29M, 8L ~52M, 16L ~98M, 20L ~121M / config total_parameters 121021910); footprint 8–29MB (.cact; full 20L ~29MB). Positioning: does not chat — every turn is tool calling or schema extraction (structured JSON); also returns text embeddings. First-party claims it can match DeepSeek V4 Flash (esp.
Top use-case fit: coding, agents, and build tasks
Agents
Included by capability and metadata signals in the decision map.
Classification
Included by capability and metadata signals in the decision map.
JSON / Tool use
Included by capability and metadata signals in the decision map.
Provider price ladder
No tracked provider token pricing is available for this model yet.
Capabilities
Benchmark peer barsfor Agents
No task-mapped benchmark peers are available for this model yet.
Migration checks
No linked migration route is available for this model yet.
API versions
needle-3needle3Cactus Compute, Inc. builds automation foundation models for tiny devices (mobiles, wearables, smart home, robots, micro
WebsiteNo tracked provider token pricing is available yet.