Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Cola2 vs LFM2.5-2.6B
LFM2.5-2.6B scores 50.3 (D) on agent readiness against Cola2's 33.9 (F), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Cola2 F
Best for Researchers working on latent or diffusion language models who want a checkpoint to study
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No licence stated for the weights
Best for Agents that want a small local helper for tool calls, extraction and RAG on a laptop, phone or CPU, at organisations under the licence's revenue threshold
Ahead on
- Reach, 90 against 25
- Risk, 50 against 40
- Agent interface, 75 against 20
Watch for
Liquid lists it as deprecated, replaced by LFM3-1.7B; deprecated models stay downloadable but get no further updates
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.
Reach LFM2.5-2.6B +65
Cola2 25
Memory 15, the only build is the F32 safetensors set, 35.07 GB, and 35.07 GB × 1.2 = 42.1 GB, within 64 GB. Loaded as BF16, as the card's example does, it needs about half, but the line reads the file size. Runtimes 0, none of the six runs it in a released version. Builds 0, one set of weights and no quantised build. Terms 0, no licence for the weights. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and nothing names an API that serves it. 15 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 10 + 0 = 25.
LFM2.5-2.6B 90
Memory earns the full 30, since Liquid's own 4-bit GGUF is 1.59 GB and fits 8 GB with room to spare. Runtimes earn 25, with the lfm2 architecture in released llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers, and in Ollama through the llama.cpp version it pins. Builds earn 15 for Liquid's own GGUF, MLX and ONNX builds at many precisions. Terms earn 10, a custom licence that is free for commercial use under $10M of annual revenue. Download earns 10, with no gate. Hosted earns nothing, as Hugging Face maps no inference provider and Liquid's docs list no hosted API for it.
Agent interface LFM2.5-2.6B +55
Cola2 20
Chat template 20, A chat template in tokenizer_config.json (4,116 characters), which came with the Qwen3 tokenizer. Tool-calling format 0, none. Trained tool calling 0, not trained for tool calling. Structured output 0, Nothing about JSON or schema-constrained output. Reasoning control 0, no reasoning mode. Context 0, no context length is stated. 20 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 20.
LFM2.5-2.6B 75
The chat template earns 20 for chat_template.jinja in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 25, as Liquid's card and tool-use page say how tools go in and how calls come back, and its vLLM and SGLang pages name the lfm2 parser. Trained tool calling earns 20, with several calls in one Python list and agentic RL inside agent harnesses. Structured output earns nothing, as JSON output isn't documented for the model. Reasoning control earns nothing, since the model always thinks. Context earns 10 for 131,072 tokens trained.
Risk LFM2.5-2.6B +10
Cola2 40
File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, the files sit in the ByteDance-Seed organisation, which the ByteDance-Seed GitHub repository for the model links to (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results. Agent guidance 5, General cautions in the GitHub model card: not instruction-tuned or safety-aligned, not for use as an assistant, for facts or advice, or for high-impact decisions about people. Licence risk 0, With no licence for the weights there is nothing to hold ByteDance to. Security programme 5, the GitHub repository's SECURITY.md sends reports to ByteDance's security centre and says how they're assessed (5). 15 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 0 + 5 = 40.
LFM2.5-2.6B 50
File safety earns 25, safetensors and GGUF only, and nothing from the repository runs to load it or build prompts. Provenance earns 15, files in the LiquidAI organisation Liquid links to, with a checksum for every file. Safety evaluation and agent guidance earn nothing, since Liquid publishes neither. Licence risk earns 10, losing 5 for the revenue threshold, with no use policy and no change since release. The security programme earns nothing, since no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact was found.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Cola2 | LFM2.5-2.6B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 25 | 90 | LFM2.5-2.6B +65 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 40 | 50 | LFM2.5-2.6B +10 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 20 | 75 | LFM2.5-2.6B +55 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 58 | 57 | Cola2 +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | F 33.9/100 | D 50.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Cola2 | LFM2.5-2.6B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | ByteDance (Seed) | Liquid AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | None stated for the weights (the code is 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 | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Cola2
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Cola2
A research release, and an honest one: ByteDance Seed says it's a base model with an unconverged latent stage, scoring below Llama-3-8B on its own table. It's here for people studying continuous-latent generation. Agents can't use it as a model: 32-token completions, no chat or tools, the repository's own code to load it, and no licence on the weights.
LFM2.5-2.6B
A small, fast model for tool calls, extraction and long-context steps on a laptop or phone, which Liquid now lists as deprecated in favour of LFM3-1.7B. Liquid's own 4-bit build is 1.6 GB and five common runtimes run it. It always thinks, and organisations over $10M of revenue need another licence. There are no safety results or security contact.
Before you call either
Cola2
- Don't plan to use this as your model. It completes short prompts and wasn't tuned to follow instructions
- Don't use it commercially on the strength of this listing. The weights have no stated licence
- If you study it, read modeling_cola2.py first: trust_remote_code runs it
- Pin Transformers below 5, as the card requires
- Pass a seeded torch.Generator to generate(). Output varies between runs even with greedy decoding
- Check the download with
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS
LFM2.5-2.6B
- Quickest start is
ollama run LiquidAI/lfm2.5-2.6b, 1.7 GB, orllama-cli -hf LiquidAI/LFM2.5-2.6B-GGUF - With vLLM or SGLang pass
--tool-call-parser lfm2; for vLLM add--reasoning-parser qwen3so the thinking comes back separately - Sample at temperature 0.1, top_k 50 and repetition_penalty 1.1, as the card and generation_config.json set
- Put tools in the system prompt as
List of tools: [...]JSON, or pass tools to apply_chat_template; calls come back as a Python list of function calls, and the system prompt can ask for JSON calls instead - Leave max_tokens unset or generous, since a low cap cuts the reasoning off mid-thought
- Earlier thinking is dropped from the prompt unless
preserve_thinkingis true - Liquid's 328M LFM2.5-2.6B-DSpark drafter speeds decoding about 2.6 times in SGLang and on Apple silicon, per Liquid
- Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Cola2 or LFM2.5-2.6B?
LFM2.5-2.6B scores 50.3 (D) on agent readiness against Cola2's 33.9 (F), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories.
Other comparisons with Cola2 or LFM2.5-2.6B
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- LFM2.5-2.6B vs Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2
- LFM2.5-2.6B vs WeVisOne-VL-2B
- LFM2.5-2.6B vs WeVisOne-VL-4B
- LFM2.5-2.6B vs ZAYA1-8B
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/cola2-vs-lfm2-5-2-6b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/cola2.json·/api/v1/tools/lfm2-5-2-6b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare cola2 lfm2-5-2-6b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "cola2", "b": "lfm2-5-2-6b"}at/mcp, no key