Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs LFM3-Omni-2B

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 and LFM3-Omni-2B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61.9 (C) and 61 (C). LFM3-Omni-2B leads on reach 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 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 C

Best for Agents or teams with a multi-GPU server, or a provider account, who want DeepSeek's V4 agent model under MIT with a 1M context

Ahead on

  • Risk, 50 against 40
  • Agent interface, 75 against 70

Watch for

The smallest 4-bit build is 156.4 GB, so it needs about 188 GB and doesn't fit a 128 GB machine

LFM3-Omni-2B C

Best for Voice and camera agents on a laptop or phone that want one small model for hearing, seeing, speaking and calling tools

Ahead on

  • Reach, 80 against 70
  • Documentation and upkeep, 49 against 38

Watch for

Only llama.cpp and Ollama run it in a release

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-Omni-2B +11

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 38

Model card 8, the card and the DSpark card it names give architecture, parameters and context, with intended use, limitations, languages and cut-off missing. Training data 5, a general description in the report with no cut-off. Last change 10, a card edit on 1 August 2026, 93 days before 2 November, so past 90 and within 180; deepseek-recipe 0.2.0 (20 October) stays read as a library-wide release, not a change to this model's files. Responsiveness 0, DeepSeek answered none of the 61 discussions, the newest opened on 17 October. Version policy 10, the preview and DSpark copies keep their own repositories and the dated 0731 release says what it supersedes. File health 5, the files agree with each other, but reports of tool-call errors and looping and a pull request for a missing chat template wait without a reply from DeepSeek.

LFM3-Omni-2B 49

Model card 14, Intended use (one on-device model in place of separate speech recognition, vision, language and speech models), architecture, parameters (2.17B), context (32K) and the text and speech languages. Training data 5, the card has no training section. Last change 20, the last commit, on 3 November 2026, changed the card's navigation icons, seven days before this check, and the one before it, on 28 October, documented video frame rate and frame limits. Responsiveness 0, none of the 12 discussions that aren't pull requests (27 October to 9 November 2026) has a reply from a LiquidAI member. Version policy 5, LFM3 came out in new repositories and the LFM2.5 models stay in theirs. File health 5, the card gives a 32K context while config.json gives the language model 128,000 positions and Liquid's API lists 128,000 for the hosted model, so the card and the files don't agree on context. 14 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 49.

Reach LFM3-Omni-2B +10

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 70

Memory 5, because the smallest build of 4-bit or better from a runtime's own library is LM Studio's MXFP4 GGUF at 156.4 GB, which with a fifth added needs 187.7 GB, more than our 107.4 GB machine and within 256 GB. DeepSeek's own release, 166.9 GB, sits in the same band. Runtimes 25, the cap, from vLLM v0.32.0, SGLang v0.5.22, llama.cpp release b11771, Transformers 5.20.0 and LM Studio's library, with Ollama not counted since its library entry is retired with no models pushed. Builds 10, DeepSeek ships one build, the FP8 and FP4 release itself. Terms 15, MIT with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 5, DeepSeek's API moved to V4.1 Flash, but five inference providers on Hugging Face serve this repository live (Together's mapping has gone since 21 October).

LFM3-Omni-2B 80

Memory 30, Liquid's Q4_K_M GGUF is 1.10 GB with its 0.29 GB projector file, and 1.39 GB × 1.2 = 1.7 GB, which fits 8 GB, well inside the 16 GB line. Runtimes 10, Released llama.cpp has the lfm3 architecture with the LFM3 vision and audio projectors and speech output (src/models/lfm3.cpp and tools/mtmd at b12242, with a realtime client example), and Ollama's library has an lfm3-omni entry. 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-omni-2b among its models, so the publisher hosts it. 30 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 80.

Risk DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 +10

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 50

File safety 15, safetensors only, less 10 because prompts are built by running DeepSeek's encoding_dsv4.py from the repository and the card's serving commands pass --trust-remote-code. Provenance 15, the deepseek-ai organisation and a SHA-256 on every shard. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 0, the encoding README's notes about the parser and the reserved developer role are usage notes, read alike for all three DeepSeek listings. Licence risk 15, MIT with no deductions. Security programme 5, for the security@deepseek.com reporting address in DeepSeek's site footer, read as for DeepSeek-V3.2, with no security.txt and no public advisories.

LFM3-Omni-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.

Agent interface DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 +5

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 75

Chat template 10, there is no Jinja template and the format is given as Python to run. Tool-calling format 10, DeepSeek documents how tools are declared and returned and ships its own parser, but only vLLM's recipe names a runtime parser, so the 25 line isn't met. Trained tool calling 20, several invoke elements in one call block. Structured output 15, DeepSeek's deepseek-recipe library documents JSON Schema response formats for V4 prompts. Reasoning control 10, chat mode with no thinking and three effort levels in thinking mode, with reasoning returned as reasoning_content. Context 10, 1M tokens trained.

LFM3-Omni-2B 70

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (13,513 characters), with roles, images, video and audio, tools, deferred tools and tool results. 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 documents tool calling from spoken or written requests. Structured output 0, the card doesn't mention JSON or structured output for this model. Reasoning control 0, the card says this is a non-reasoning model and that enable_thinking=True is not supported, so there is no thinking to turn off or budget. Context 5, 32K tokens of input and output per the card. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 5 = 70.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731LFM3-Omni-2BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257080LFM3-Omni-2B +10
Risk20%205040DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 +10
Agent interface10%107570DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 +5
Documentation and upkeep10%103849LFM3-Omni-2B +11
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61.9/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731LFM3-Omni-2B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorDeepSeekLiquid AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITLFM Open License v1.0 (free commercial use below $10M annual revenue)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-07-312026-11-03
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

A long-context agent cousin under MIT with documented tool calls, three reasoning effort levels and support in every major runtime but Ollama. It needs about 190 to 200 GB of memory, though five inference providers serve it. The main risks are prompts built from DeepSeek's Python, no published safety results and no answers in its repository.

LFM3-Omni-2B

One 2.17B model that sees, listens and talks on an 8 GB machine and turns spoken requests into tool calls. Only llama.cpp and Ollama run it in a release. The context is 32K, it doesn't reason, Liquid hasn't answered a question on the repository, and there are no safety results or data sources.

Before you call either

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

  1. vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 --trust-remote-code --kv-cache-dtype fp8 --block-size 256 --data-parallel-size 4 --enable-expert-parallel --moe-backend deep_gemm_mega_moe --attention-config '{"use_fp4_indexer_cache": true}' --speculative-config '{"method":"dspark","num_speculative_tokens":7,"draft_sample_method":"greedy"}' --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v4 --tool-call-parser deepseek_v4 --enable-auto-tool-choice --reasoning-parser deepseek_v4 (the card's 4x GB300 example plus the parser flags from vLLM's recipe)
  2. Build prompts with encoding_dsv4.py, deepseek-recipe's V4 encoder or vLLM's --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v4, since the repository has no Jinja template
  3. Tool calls come back in a DSML tool_calls block with invoke elements, string parameters carry string="true" and JSON values string="false"
  4. Set temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for agent work, and allow up to 384K output tokens at reasoning effort high or max
  5. Without the hardware, call it through a Hugging Face inference provider (DeepInfra, Novita, Baseten, Scaleway, Featherless), not DeepSeek's API, where deepseek-v4-flash now means V4.1 Flash
  6. LM Studio's library build is a 156.4 GB MXFP4 GGUF and LM Studio states 156 GB minimum system memory

LFM3-Omni-2B

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf LiquidAI/LFM3-Omni-2B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja or ollama run lfm3-omni
  2. Greedy decoding for text. For speech use audio_temperature 0.4 and audio_repetition_penalty 1.2, per the card
  3. The context is 32K, and llama.cpp samples video at 2 frames a second up to 384 frames
  4. Parse tool calls yourself from the XML it returns
  5. It doesn't reason, so don't pass enable_thinking
  6. Validate JSON output yourself

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 or LFM3-Omni-2B?

DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 and LFM3-Omni-2B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61.9 (C) and 61 (C). LFM3-Omni-2B leads on reach and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 or LFM3-Omni-2B

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