Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
GLM-5.3 vs LFM3-VL-2B
GLM-5.3 scores 64.6 (B) on agent readiness against LFM3-VL-2B's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. LFM3-VL-2B leads on reach, 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
GLM-5.3 B
Best for Teams with an 8-GPU server who want an open coding and long-horizon agent model with a 1M-token context, or agents that call it through Z.ai or a hosted provider
Ahead on
- Risk, 50 against 40
Watch for
Z.ai's smallest build is 755.6 GB in FP8, with no local Ollama or LM Studio build
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
- Reach, 85 against 55
- Agent interface, 90 against 70
- Documentation and upkeep, 77 against 58
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.
Reach LFM3-VL-2B +30
GLM-5.3 55
Memory earns nothing, since Z.ai's smallest build is the 755.6 GB FP8 one, about 907 GB with the fifth added, and Ollama only lists a cloud entry. Four runtimes run it in a released version, llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers, for 20, while Ollama and LM Studio have no local build. Z.ai publishes one quantised build, FP8, for 10, since the BF16 repository is the full precision. The GLM-5.3 License is a custom licence that is free for commercial use below a revenue threshold, for 10. The files download with no account or gate, for 10, and Z.ai's own API plus eight live providers on Hugging Face serve it, for 5.
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.
Agent interface LFM3-VL-2B +20
GLM-5.3 70
A Jinja chat template sits in the repository, for 20. The tool-calling format is 10, since it is defined only by the template and the glm47 parser is named by vLLM and SGLang rather than by Z.ai. The template takes several calls in one turn, for 20. Structured output is 0, with nothing on the card and JSON documented only for the hosted API. Reasoning control is 10, a per-request budget through reasoning_effort with the reasoning in a think block, though thinking can't be turned off. Context is 10, 1,048,576 tokens native with no rope scaling.
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.
Documentation and upkeep LFM3-VL-2B +19
GLM-5.3 58
The card covers intended use, languages and context and misses limitations, architecture, parameters and cut-off, for 8. Training data is 5, a description of the GLM-5 corpus in the cited report with no cut-off. The last change, a chat template speed-up on 14 October in the FP8 repository and on 15 October in the BF16 one, is within 30 days on 2 November, for 20. Responsiveness is 5, as zai-org answered 2 of the 16 discussions that aren't pull requests, the last on 8 September, which is a few, and no discussion has been opened since 10 October. Version policy is the full 10, with each GLM-5 release in its own repository and a dated blog saying what changed from GLM-5.2. File health is the full 10, with files and card agreeing and no broken-file report waiting by title.
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.
Risk GLM-5.3 +10
GLM-5.3 50
File safety is full, with safetensors only, no Python in the repository and no remote code needed in Transformers 5.12.0 or later. Provenance is full, files in the zai-org organisation Z.ai links to with a SHA-256 for every shard. Safety evaluation is 0, because the blog mentions safety evaluation and hardening but publishes no results, and agent guidance is 0, with nothing on refusals, prompt injection or cautions. Licence risk is 10, losing 5 for the security review that model-as-a-service operators above US$10 billion of revenue must pass. The security programme is 0, with no security.txt, no SECURITY.md and no advisories.
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.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | GLM-5.3 | LFM3-VL-2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 55 | 85 | LFM3-VL-2B +30 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 50 | 40 | GLM-5.3 +10 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 70 | 90 | LFM3-VL-2B +20 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 58 | 77 | LFM3-VL-2B +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | B 64.6/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | GLM-5.3 | LFM3-VL-2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) | Liquid AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | GLM-5.3 License (MIT-style, with a security review for the largest model-as-a-service operators) | LFM Open License v1.0 (free commercial use below $10M annual revenue) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-11-09 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |
Verdicts
GLM-5.3
A large coding and long-horizon agent model with a 1M-token context, several tool calls per turn and three reasoning budgets. Z.ai's smallest build is 756 GB in FP8, so it needs an 8-GPU server, Z.ai's API or a provider. The main risks are no published safety work, no way to report a flaw, and thinking that can't be turned off.
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
GLM-5.3
- Start it with
vllm serve zai-org/GLM-5.3 --kv-cache-dtype fp8 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --speculative-config.method mtp --speculative-config.num_speculative_tokens 5 --tool-call-parser glm47 --reasoning-parser glm47 --enable-auto-tool-choice --served-model-name glm-5.3(vLLM 0.28.0 or later, 8xH200 or 8xH20 per vLLM's recipe) - Use the glm47 tool-call and reasoning parsers in vLLM or SGLang; SGLang's cookbook says glm45 leaves the calls as plain text
- Pass
chat_template_kwargs: {"reasoning_effort": "low"}for short tasks; anything other than low or high falls back to max - Pass
clear_thinking: truein chat use, since the template keeps earlier reasoning by default - Don't send
enable_thinking: false; the template ignores it and always opens a think block - Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output is documented only for Z.ai's hosted API
- No Z.ai build fits a 128 GB machine; the full 1M context needs 8xB200 per vLLM's recipe
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, GLM-5.3 or LFM3-VL-2B?
GLM-5.3 scores 64.6 (B) on agent readiness against LFM3-VL-2B's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. LFM3-VL-2B leads on reach, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/glm-5-3-vs-lfm3-vl-2b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/glm-5-3.json·/api/v1/tools/lfm3-vl-2b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare glm-5-3 lfm3-vl-2b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "glm-5-3", "b": "lfm3-vl-2b"}at/mcp, no key