Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Gemma 4 12B IT vs LFM3-Audio-2B
Gemma 4 12B IT scores 72.3 (BB) on agent readiness against LFM3-Audio-2B's 61 (C), 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 4969 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Agents on a 12 GB or larger GPU or Mac that want a permissively licensed tool-calling model with images, audio and long context
Ahead on
- Reach, 95 against 80
- Risk, 70 against 40
- Documentation and upkeep, 85 against 52
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
Watch for
No safety evaluation figures published
Best for Voice agents on a laptop or phone that need speech in, speech out and tool calls from one small model
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
Only llama.cpp and Ollama run it in a release, though the card lists vLLM and SGLang
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 Gemma 4 12B IT +33
Gemma 4 12B IT 85
Model card 20, all seven items are there. Training data 10, a general description by type with a January 2025 cut-off and the filtering, but no sources, mix or sizes. Last change 20, Google merged a fix for 210 glitch tokens in tokenizer.json on 30 October 2026, two days before 1 November. Responsiveness 20, Google replied to 18 of 34 questions and reports, the last on 2026-07-31, re-counted on 1 November. Version policy 10, earlier Gemma generations keep their own repositories and gemma.ai has a dated releases page. File health 5, the files agree with the card but a report about them waits without a reply.
LFM3-Audio-2B 52
Model card 17, Intended use (local agents, tool calling, structured outputs, fine-tuning), limitations (not recommended for agentic coding or complex multi-step reasoning, voice chat in English only), an architecture section, parameters (2B), context (32K) and 19 speech languages and locales. 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 31 October, edited the card. Responsiveness 0, Neither of the 2 discussions that aren't pull requests (27 and 31 October 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. 17 + 5 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 52.
Risk Gemma 4 12B IT +30
Gemma 4 12B IT 70
File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only, with nothing from the repository run on load. Provenance 15, the files sit in Google's own organisation and every file has a checksum. Safety evaluation 0, the card says testing showed minimal policy violations but gives no figures. Agent guidance 10, the card names the harm categories its safety training covers and asks for content-safety safeguards, and the tool guide says to validate calls, with no prompt-injection guidance. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 with no added policy, no threshold and a working link. Security programme 5, Google's security.txt and reward programme give a route to report a flaw, but no public Gemma advisories were found.
LFM3-Audio-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 Gemma 4 12B IT +15
Gemma 4 12B IT 95
Memory 30, Google's own 4-bit QAT GGUF with its projector is 7.15 GB, which with a fifth on top is 8.6 GB and fits in 16 GB or less. Runtimes 25, released support in Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp, Ollama and LM Studio, six of six, all for the separate gemma4_unified architecture. Builds 15, Google publishes a Q4_0 GGUF and a w4a16 build, read as two kinds as for the 31B. Terms 15, plain Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, no account or gate. Hosted 0, the Gemini API serves only the two largest sizes and no inference provider lists this one.
LFM3-Audio-2B 80
Memory 30, Liquid's Q4_K_M GGUF is 1.10 GB with its 0.17 GB projector file, and 1.27 GB × 1.2 = 1.5 GB, which fits 8 GB, well inside the 16 GB line. Runtimes 10, Released llama.cpp has the lfm3 architecture with the LFM3 audio projector and speech output (src/models/lfm3.cpp and tools/mtmd at b12242, with a realtime client example that starts this model), and Ollama's library has an lfm3-audio 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-audio-2b among its models, so the publisher hosts it. 30 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 80.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Gemma 4 12B IT | LFM3-Audio-2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 95 | 80 | Gemma 4 12B IT +15 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 70 | 40 | Gemma 4 12B IT +30 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 85 | 52 | Gemma 4 12B IT +33 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | BB 72.3/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Gemma 4 12B IT | LFM3-Audio-2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Google DeepMind | 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 | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-07-20 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (4) | none |
How the scores have moved
LFM3-Audio-2B
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Gemma 4 12B IT
A mid-size cousin for agent work with tools, optional thinking and image and audio input, under Apache 2.0. Google's 4-bit build needs under 9 GB with working space, so it runs on a 12 GB GPU or any recent Mac in all the common runtimes. The main risks are no published safety results and no documented JSON output.
LFM3-Audio-2B
A 2B model that listens and speaks on an 8 GB machine, transcribes and translates 19 languages and turns spoken requests into tool calls. Only llama.cpp and Ollama run it in a release. The context is 32K, voice chat is English only, Liquid hasn't answered the repository's questions, and there are no safety results or data sources.
Before you call either
Gemma 4 12B IT
- On the reference machine run
llama-server -hf google/gemma-4-12B-it-qat-q4_0-gguf --hf-file gemma-4-12b-it-qat-q4_0.gguf --jinja -c 131072, and add--mmprojwith mmproj-gemma-4-12b-it-qat-q4_0.gguf for images and audio - With Ollama run
ollama run gemma4:12band raise num_ctx or OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH, since the default context is small and agents want at least 64K - In vLLM or SGLang pass
--tool-call-parser gemma4 --reasoning-parser gemma4(vLLM also--enable-auto-tool-choice), or tool calls come back as text; Google's w4a16 build is the 4-bit route there - Thinking is off by default; pass enable_thinking=True or start the system prompt with <|think|>, and drop earlier turns' thinking from history except on tool-call turns
- Put images before the text and audio after it, keep audio to 30 seconds and video to 60 frames, and validate tool names and arguments before running them
- Transformers needs 5.10.0 or later for gemma4_unified, and mlx-lm has no gemma4_unified code, so on a Mac use mlx-vlm, LM Studio or Ollama
LFM3-Audio-2B
- Start it with
llama-server -hf LiquidAI/LFM3-Audio-2B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinjaorollama run lfm3-audio - llama.cpp ships examples/realtime_client.py for live speech with this model
- Prefill the assistant turn with an open think tag to let it reason before a text reply
- The context is 32K
- Voice chat is English only, while transcription, synthesis and translation cover 19 languages and locales
- Liquid doesn't recommend it for agentic coding or complex multi-step reasoning
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Gemma 4 12B IT or LFM3-Audio-2B?
Gemma 4 12B IT scores 72.3 (BB) on agent readiness against LFM3-Audio-2B's 61 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/gemma-4-12b-it-vs-lfm3-audio-2b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/gemma-4-12b-it.json·/api/v1/tools/lfm3-audio-2b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare gemma-4-12b-it lfm3-audio-2b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "gemma-4-12b-it", "b": "lfm3-audio-2b"}at/mcp, no key