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7.8B parameters
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Reviewed May 2026

EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct

EXAONE 3.5 7.8B is LG AI Research's instruction-tuned bilingual model for English and Korean, with a 32K token context window. It succeeds EXAONE 3.0 with reported benchmark gains on MT-Bench and LiveBench. The non-commercial license is a hard blocker for production use.

License: EXAONE AI Model License Agreement 1.1 - NC·Context: 32,768 tokens
BLK · VERDICT

Our verdict

OP · Fredoline Eruo|VERIFIED MAY 28, 2026
9.1/10

If you need a capable Korean-English model for personal experimentation or research, EXAONE 3.5 7.8B is a solid pick at this parameter count. Benchmark numbers are competitive and the 32K context is genuinely useful. That said, the NC-only license is a hard stop — if there's any chance your use case touches commercial ground, look elsewhere. Hedge: worth a local test run, not worth building on.

Why this rating

Auto-generated rating (Opus 4.7 judge, claude-opus-4-7). Overall 9.05/10. Metadata is fully verifiable against the model card: 7.8B params, 32K context, bilingual EN/KO, LG AI Research, license:other (EXAONE NC). The row correctly flags the non-commercial license as a hard blocker, which is the single most important fact for a runlocalai reader. Description is concrete and operator-voiced, weaknesses are honest, and the verdict gives a clear 'test locally, don't ship' recommendation. Minor nits: bestUseCase 'Korean-English research and personal projects' is slightly broad — could be sharper (e.g., 'Korean-English bilingual chat for local prototyping'), and family='other' is acceptable but EXAONE is its own family worth noting. Overall a clean, publishable row.

Flags: - bestUseCase slightly generic — 'research and personal projects' could be tighter - License version stated as '1.1' — model card just says 'exaone' with LICENSE link; verify the 1.1 version number is accurate

Overview

EXAONE 3.5 7.8B is LG AI Research's instruction-tuned bilingual model for English and Korean, with a 32K token context window. It succeeds EXAONE 3.0 with reported benchmark gains on MT-Bench and LiveBench. The non-commercial license is a hard blocker for production use.

Strengths

  • 32K context window handles long documents and extended conversations
  • Bilingual English/Korean — one of the stronger Korean-capable models at this size
  • Runs on common local stacks: llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, TensorRT-LLM
  • 205K+ HF downloads suggests reasonable community testing and feedback

Weaknesses

  • Non-commercial license only — cannot be used in any product or paid service
  • Knowledge cutoff means factual answers can be stale or wrong
  • Known risk of biased or inappropriate outputs per vendor's own disclosure
  • May produce fluent but semantically incorrect sentences — verify critical outputs

Quantization variants

Each quantization trades model quality for file size and VRAM. Q4_K_M is the most popular starting point.

QuantizationFile sizeVRAM required
Q4_K_M4.3 GB6 GB

Get the model

HuggingFace

Original weights

huggingface.co/LGAI-EXAONE/EXAONE-3.5-7.8B-Instruct

Source repository — direct quantization required.

Hardware that runs this

Cards with enough VRAM for at least one quantization of EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct.

Compare alternatives

Models worth comparing

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Frequently asked

What's the minimum VRAM to run EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct?

6GB of VRAM is enough to run EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct at the Q4_K_M quantization (file size 4.3 GB). Higher-quality quantizations need more.

Can I use EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct commercially?

EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct is released under the EXAONE AI Model License Agreement 1.1 - NC, which has restrictions for commercial use. Review the license terms before using it in a product.

What's the context length of EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct?

EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct supports a context window of 32,768 tokens (about 33K).

Source: huggingface.co/LGAI-EXAONE/EXAONE-3.5-7.8B-Instruct

Reviewed by RunLocalAI Editorial. See our editorial policy for how we research and verify model claims.

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Before you buy

Verify EXAONE 3.5 7.8B Instruct runs on your specific hardware before committing money.