Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Agents-A1-4B vs LFM3-VL-2B
Agents-A1-4B and LFM3-VL-2B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). LFM3-VL-2B leads on agent interface and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 4969 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Local agent loops (search, research, tool calls) on a laptop, a small GPU or a phone-class machine, under a plain licence
Ahead on
- Reach, 90 against 85
- Risk, 55 against 40
Watch for
The base isn't declared, and the technical report doesn't cover the 4B
Best for Agents on a laptop, phone or robot that need to read screens, documents, images and video from a model under 2 GB at 4 bits
Ahead on
- Agent interface, 90 against 70
- Documentation and upkeep, 77 against 43
Watch for
vLLM and SGLang support is unreleased, which the card says itself
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Documentation and upkeep LFM3-VL-2B +34
Agents-A1-4B 43
Model card 8, it covers intended use, parameters and context but not the architecture, limitations, languages or a knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a general description with no cut-off. Last change 10, the files went up on 14 July 2026, 112 days before 3 November 2026, and the GitHub repository's last commit is 16 July. Responsiveness 10, InternScience answered one of the three discussions, unchanged on 3 November 2026. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 5, the files agree on the essentials, but the config declares a prediction layer that isn't shipped and the template carries a dated default prompt.
LFM3-VL-2B 77
Model card 17, Intended use (questions about video, documents, charts and app screens, finding objects, spatial reasoning), a limitation (not recommended for coding, multi-turn conversations or complex reasoning), architecture (language model, 14-layer vision encoder and projector), parameters (1.92B), context (128K) and 16 languages. Training data 5, A general description: the base's 22T tokens of pre-training with the kinds of data added since LFM2, then vision mid-training on image and video data, supervised fine-tuning, vision reinforcement learning and distillation. Last change 20, the last commit, on 9 November 2026, added the OpenVINO checkpoint to the card's inference table, a day before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 5 discussions that aren't pull requests (27 to 31 October 2026), 3 have a reply from a LiquidAI member, which is most. Version policy 5, LFM3 came out in new repositories and the LFM2.5 models stay in theirs. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the lfm3_vl architecture, the 128,000-token context and the vision settings in processor_config.json. 17 + 5 + 20 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 77.
Agent interface LFM3-VL-2B +20
Agents-A1-4B 70
Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the card names the qwen3_coder parser but the format is only in the template. Trained tool calling 20, the card says it was trained for tool use and the template renders several calls in one turn. Structured output 0. Reasoning control 10, the template turns thinking off per request and the card's reasoning parser returns it apart from the answer. Context 10, 262,144 tokens.
LFM3-VL-2B 90
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (12,129 characters), with roles, images and video, tools, deferred tools, tool results and the thinking switch. Tool-calling format 25, the card and Liquid's tool-use page document tools passed through tools= in apply_chat_template, calls returned as XML and results sent back as tool messages. Trained tool calling 20, the template loops over every entry in an assistant turn's tool_calls, so several calls fit in one turn, and the card says its fine-tuning mix included tool calling and agentic traces. Structured output 5, the card's vLLM and SGLang commands set a structured-output backend and its fine-tuning table has a JSON extraction notebook, but nothing says how to ask this model for JSON. Liquid's API guide documents response_format with lfm3-1.7b as its example. Reasoning control 10, Liquid's chat-template page documents enable_thinking=False in apply_chat_template for LFM3, with reasoning on by default inside think tags, and the card documents preserve_thinking and reports a no-thinking configuration in its benchmarks. Context 10, 128K tokens of input and output per the card, and max_position_embeddings 128000 for the language model in config.json. 20 + 25 + 20 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 90.
Risk Agents-A1-4B +15
Agents-A1-4B 55
File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and nothing from the repository runs. Provenance 15, the files are in the InternScience organisation its GitHub repository links to, with a SHA-256 for every weight file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 through the chain from Qwen3.5-4B with no conditions added. Security programme 0, no policy, contact or security.txt.
LFM3-VL-2B 40
File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, files in the LiquidAI organisation, which Liquid's docs page for the model and its blog post link to (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card or in Liquid's blog post for the LFM3 family, neither of which mentions safety testing. Agent guidance 0, Nothing on prompt injection, an instruction hierarchy, what refusals cover or safeguards to add. Licence risk 10, 15 less 5 for the $10M annual revenue threshold on commercial use. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw found. 15 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 10 + 0 = 40.
Reach Agents-A1-4B +5
Agents-A1-4B 90
Memory 30, InternScience's Q4_K_M GGUF with its vision projector is 3.4 GB and needs about 4.1 GB with the fifth added. Runtimes 20, the Qwen3.5 architecture runs in released vLLM, SGLang, Transformers and llama.cpp, while Ollama's and LM Studio's entries are the base's, not this model's. Builds 15, InternScience publishes FP8 and three GGUF precisions. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, one inference provider serves it and the line needs two.
LFM3-VL-2B 85
Memory 30, Liquid's Q4_K_M GGUF is 1.10 GB with its 0.20 GB projector file, and 1.30 GB × 1.2 = 1.6 GB, which fits 8 GB, well inside the 16 GB line. Runtimes 15, Released llama.cpp has the lfm3 architecture and the LFM3-VL projector (src/models/lfm3.cpp and tools/mtmd at b12242), Ollama's library has an lfm3-vl entry, and LM Studio's catalogue lists liquid/lfm3-vl-2b. Builds 15, Liquid's GGUF repository holds Q4_0, Q4_K_M, Q8_0, F16 and BF16 files, and Liquid publishes 4-bit and 8-bit MLX builds and an ONNX repository, all in the LiquidAI organisation. Terms 10, the LFM Open License v1.0, a custom licence that lets anyone use it commercially for free below a threshold of $10M annual revenue. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the model and its GGUF, MLX and ONNX repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 5, Liquid's own API lists lfm3-vl-2b among its models, so the publisher hosts it. 30 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 85.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Agents-A1-4B | LFM3-VL-2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 90 | 85 | Agents-A1-4B +5 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 40 | Agents-A1-4B +15 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 70 | 90 | LFM3-VL-2B +20 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 43 | 77 | LFM3-VL-2B +34 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Agents-A1-4B | LFM3-VL-2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | InternScience (Shanghai AI Laboratory) | Liquid AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | LFM Open License v1.0 (free commercial use below $10M annual revenue) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-07-14 | 2026-11-09 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |
Verdicts
Agents-A1-4B
A small agent cousin for search, research and tool-calling loops, with vision and 262,144 tokens of context. It runs in about 4 GB from InternScience's Q4_K_M GGUF, in vLLM, SGLang, Transformers or llama.cpp. The main risks are an undeclared base, no safety results or agent guidance, and a template that adds its own dated system prompt when you send none.
LFM3-VL-2B
A 1.92B vision model that reads images and video on an 8 GB machine, with a documented tool-call format and thinking. It runs today in llama.cpp, Ollama and LM Studio, while vLLM and SGLang support is still unreleased. Transformers needs repository code, and there are no safety results, security contact or data sources.
Before you call either
Agents-A1-4B
- Quickest start is
llama-server -hf InternScience/Agents-A1-4B-Q4_K_M-GGUF --jinja, about 3.4 GB with the vision projector - With vLLM use
--reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, as on the card, and add--language-model-onlyfor text-only work - Always send your own system message, or the template inserts InternScience's default prompt with the date fixed at 2026-07-14
- The card recommends temperature 0.85, top_p 0.95, top_k 20, min_p 0 and presence_penalty 1.1, and there is no generation_config.json to set them
- Thinking is on by default, send
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingfalse for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention - The config declares a multi-token prediction layer that isn't shipped, so don't turn on MTP speculative decoding
- Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
LFM3-VL-2B
- Start it with
llama-server -hf LiquidAI/LFM3-VL-2B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinjaorollama run lfm3-vl, with llama.cpp b11960 or later - Use temperature 0.1, top_k 50 and repetition penalty 1.1, per the card
- Video is sampled at 2 frames a second up to 768 frames, and each frame costs context. Video input in llama.cpp needs ffmpeg
- Don't plan on vLLM or SGLang until a release carries LFM3-VL
- Validate JSON output yourself
- Liquid doesn't recommend it for coding, multi-turn conversations or complex reasoning
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Agents-A1-4B or LFM3-VL-2B?
Agents-A1-4B and LFM3-VL-2B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). LFM3-VL-2B leads on agent interface and documentation and upkeep.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/agents-a1-4b-vs-lfm3-vl-2b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/agents-a1-4b.json·/api/v1/tools/lfm3-vl-2b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare agents-a1-4b lfm3-vl-2b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "agents-a1-4b", "b": "lfm3-vl-2b"}at/mcp, no key