Agentic AI systems depend on a model’s ability to reliably call tools, selecting the right function, formatting arguments correctly, and integrating results into multi-step workflows. Large frontier models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini handle this well, but they come with tradeoffs in cost, latency, and hardware requirements that make them impractical for many real-world deployments. Small language models have done well to close that gap, and several compact, open-weight options now offer first-class tool-calling support without the need for a data center to run them.

Full report : Here are 5 small language models that hare one important trait: they all support structured tool calling in a compact, open-weight package.