Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
gpt-oss-120b vs LFM3-Audio-2B
gpt-oss-120b scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against LFM3-Audio-2B's 61 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. LFM3-Audio-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 4969 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
gpt-oss-120b BB
Best for Agents on one 80 GB GPU or a 128 GB unified machine that want an Apache 2.0 reasoning model with wide runtime support
Ahead on
- Risk, 95 against 40
- Agent interface, 90 against 85
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
Watch for
Needs about 78 GB, too big for 64 GB machines, and OpenAI ships only one precision
Best for Voice agents on a laptop or phone that need speech in, speech out and tool calls from one small model
Ahead on
- Reach, 80 against 75
- Documentation and upkeep, 52 against 45
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.
Risk gpt-oss-120b +55
gpt-oss-120b 95
File safety earns 25, safetensors only, with metal/model.bin a raw format and not pickle, and nothing from the repository runs on load. Provenance earns 15, files in OpenAI's linked organisation with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation earns 20, published results with SecureBio as an outside evaluator. Agent guidance earns 15 for the trained instruction hierarchy with prompt-injection results. Licence risk keeps all 15. The security programme earns 5 for OpenAI's Bugcrowd programme and disclosure policy, and the advisories half scores 0 because GitHub couldn't be checked, not because it was found missing.
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.
Documentation and upkeep LFM3-Audio-2B +7
gpt-oss-120b 45
The model card earns 20, with all seven items in OpenAI's arXiv card. Training data earns 10, a general description with a cut-off. Last change earns 5, since the last change to code that runs the model was the Metal reference on 1 November 2025, a year before this check, and the files date from August 2025. It drops to 0 after 1 November 2026 unless the files, template or reference code change. Responsiveness earns 0, with no OpenAI reply in the 40 latest discussions. Version policy earns 5 as a first release. File health earns 5, the files agree but template and tokenizer reports wait 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.
Reach LFM3-Audio-2B +5
gpt-oss-120b 75
Memory earns 10, because the smallest 4-bit build, Ollama's 65 GB gpt-oss:120b, needs about 78 GB with the fifth added, which fits the reference machine but not 64 GB. Runtimes earn the full 25 from Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Ollama. Builds earn 10, since OpenAI ships one precision, MXFP4. Terms earn 15 for Apache 2.0 with a policy that asks only for lawful use. Download earns 10, with no gate or account. Hosted earns 5, since 11 inference providers serve it on Hugging Face even though OpenAI's own API doesn't.
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.
Agent interface gpt-oss-120b +5
gpt-oss-120b 90
The chat template earns 20, a Jinja file in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 25, since OpenAI documents declarations and returned calls in harmony and tells vLLM users to parse with openai-harmony. Trained tool calling earns 10, because each call stops generation, so calls come one at a time. Structured output earns 15 for the documented Response Formats section with a JSON Schema. Reasoning control earns 10, three effort levels per request with the reasoning on the analysis channel. Context earns 10 for 131,072 trained tokens.
LFM3-Audio-2B 85
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (9,328 characters), with roles, 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 names turning spoken requests into tool calls as one of its four uses. Structured output 5, the card says the model is designed for structured outputs without saying how to ask for JSON. Liquid's API guide documents response_format with lfm3-1.7b as its example. Reasoning control 10, the card documents reasoning per request for text replies: the caller prefills the assistant turn with an open think tag to let the model reason, or a closed one for a direct answer, with a use_thinking example. Context 5, 32K tokens of input and output per the card. 20 + 25 + 20 + 5 + 10 + 5 = 85.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | gpt-oss-120b | LFM3-Audio-2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 75 | 80 | LFM3-Audio-2B +5 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 95 | 40 | gpt-oss-120b +55 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 90 | 85 | gpt-oss-120b +5 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 45 | 52 | LFM3-Audio-2B +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | BB 70.2/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | gpt-oss-120b | LFM3-Audio-2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | OpenAI | 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 | 2025-08-26 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (4) | none |
Verdicts
gpt-oss-120b
A reasoning and agent cousin that runs in most runtimes under Apache 2.0 with published safety work. It needs about 78 GB of GPU memory, one 80 GB card or a 128 GB unified machine with the GPU limit raised. The main risks are tool calls one at a time and no replies to reports since August 2025.
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
gpt-oss-120b
- Start it with
ollama run gpt-oss:120bon the reference machine, the build that fits - On the Strix Halo machine raise the GPU memory limit first with
amd-ttm --set 100, since the default of about 62.8 GiB is below the 78 GB it needs - With vLLM use
vllm serve openai/gpt-oss-120b --tool-call-parser openai --enable-auto-tool-choiceper vLLM's recipe, or parse raw output with openai-harmony - Always use the harmony format through the chat template or openai-harmony, the card says it won't work correctly otherwise
- Set
Reasoning: lowin the system message for short tasks, medium is the default - Pass the reasoning back after a tool call until the final answer, and keep the analysis channel away from end users
- Expect one tool call per turn and loop, don't wait for parallel calls
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, gpt-oss-120b or LFM3-Audio-2B?
gpt-oss-120b scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against LFM3-Audio-2B's 61 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. LFM3-Audio-2B leads on reach and documentation and upkeep.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/gpt-oss-120b-vs-lfm3-audio-2b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/gpt-oss-120b.json·/api/v1/tools/lfm3-audio-2b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare gpt-oss-120b lfm3-audio-2b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "gpt-oss-120b", "b": "lfm3-audio-2b"}at/mcp, no key