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Saiga

The best-known Russian community fine-tune: open models (Llama, Mistral, Gemma, YandexGPT) trained to act as a Russian-speaking assistant. A convenient starting point for a Russian chatbot on your own server.

Developer
Ilya Gusev (IlyaGusev), Russia
First release
Apr 2023
Latest release
Apr 2025
Sizes
7B – 70B
License
Commercial use with conditionsLoRA adapters: CC-BY 4.0; the complete model inherits the base license: Llama Community License, Gemma Terms, Apache 2.0 for the Mistral Nemo version, YandexGPT's own license for the YandexGPT 5 Lite version
Russian
Supported
Ready-made builds
GGUF, GPTQ
Running
On your own serverNeeds a GPU
Industries
Customer support, Marketing and content, Education
Deploy on your server Hugging Face GitHub

What it does

  • Russian-language chat assistant
  • Answers based on the company knowledge base
  • Drafts of emails, descriptions and posts in Russian
  • Summarizing and simplifying Russian texts

Where it is used

Customer supportMarketing and contentInternal services for employeesSmall business without an API budget

Hardware requirements

LaptopLaptop or regular PC, up to 8 GB of VRAM — smaller versions
fits
1 GPUOne GPU with 16–80 GB — mid-size versions
fits
ClusterServer with several GPUs — flagship versions
no versions

Versions

  1. Saiga Gemma 3 12B
  2. Saiga YandexGPT 8B
  3. Saiga Nemo 12B
  4. Saiga Llama 3 70B
  5. Saiga Llama 3 8B
  6. Saiga Mistral 7B
  7. Saiga2 (Llama 2)
  8. Saiga 7B / 13B (LLaMA, LoRA)

How to run it

On your own serverWeights are downloaded from Hugging Face and served with vLLM (load and API) or llama.cpp (modest hardware). The model then runs in a closed network with no per-request fees.Hugging Face
How much hardware you needCalculate the VRAM for the model size, context length and number of concurrent requests.Open the hardware calculator

I can set this up end to end: pick the model size, deploy it on your server and connect it to your systems. Quantization compresses a model so it takes less video memory and runs on more modest hardware. Answers change slightly, so quality is checked on your own examples.

Frequently asked questions

Can Saiga be used in a commercial project?

With conditions. License: LoRA adapters: CC-BY 4.0; the complete model inherits the base license: Llama Community License, Gemma Terms, Apache 2.0 for the Mistral Nemo version, YandexGPT's own license for the YandexGPT 5 Lite version. Restrictions vary — region, company revenue, attribution requirements. Have a lawyer check the terms before a commercial launch.

What hardware does Saiga need?

At minimum: Laptop or regular PC, up to 8 GB of VRAM — smaller versions. Without a GPU the model is not practical. You can calculate the exact VRAM for your model size and context in the hardware calculator.

Does Saiga support Russian?

Yes, Russian is listed on the model card.

Where can I download Saiga and what does it cost?

The Saiga weights are open and free to download. You only pay for the hardware it runs on and for the setup. Source links are at the bottom of this page.

How I deploy it for clients

  1. SelectionI pick the model size for your task and hardware and test it on your examples.
  2. DeploymentI deploy it on your server or in a closed network and provide an API.
  3. Fine-tuningI fine-tune it on your data (LoRA) or connect a knowledge base — whichever is cheaper for the task.
  4. IntegrationI connect it to your CRM, ERP, bot, website or team chat and set up monitoring.

Comparisons

Similar models

TextVikhrVikhr Models · RussiaCommercial use allowed

Russian-language fine-tunes of open models (Mistral, Qwen, Llama) by the independent Vikhr team, with compact versions for a regular PC. Borealis is an audio model for recognizing and understanding Russian speech.

DetailsTextT-Pro / T-LiteT-Bank · RussiaCommercial use allowed

T-Bank models fine-tuned from Qwen for Russian: they write and reason in Russian noticeably better than the original. T-Lite is 8B, T-Pro 32B on one GPU; T-Search is a multi-step search agent in Russian and English.

DetailsTextRuadapt (RuadaptQwen)Lomonosov Moscow State University Research Computing Center, LAIR lab (RefalMachine) · RussiaCommercial use allowed

Qwen models adapted for Russian: a new tokenizer plus further training on Russian texts. As a result, Russian text is generated up to twice as fast as with the original model of the same size.

Details

Source: huggingface.co/IlyaGusev/saiga_gemma3_12b. Data checked against the model card on 22 Sep 2026. Have a lawyer review the license before commercial launch.