Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
gpt-oss-20b vs LFM3-VL-2B
gpt-oss-20b scores 69.9 (B) on agent readiness against LFM3-VL-2B's 61 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. LFM3-VL-2B leads on 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
Best for Local agents on a 24 GB GPU or Mac that want a permissive licence, wide runtime support and documented structured output, one tool call at a time
Ahead on
- Reach, 90 against 85
- Risk, 85 against 40
Watch for
No reply from OpenAI to any discussion since August 2025, and template reports wait unanswered
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
- Documentation and upkeep, 77 against 42
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.
Risk gpt-oss-20b +45
gpt-oss-20b 85
File safety earns 25, since the weights are safetensors and metal/model.bin is OpenAI's own raw Metal format rather than pickle, and nothing in the repository runs as code (a judgement call on the .bin name). Provenance earns 15, files in OpenAI's own organisation and a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation earns 10, because the published safety results for this size are OpenAI's own, and the outside review covered gpt-oss-120b. Agent guidance earns 15 for an instruction hierarchy the model was trained to follow, with prompt-injection results, though OpenAI reports it trails o4-mini there. Licence risk keeps 15, with nothing to deduct under Apache 2.0. The security programme earns 5 for OpenAI's security.txt with a Bugcrowd contact. Public advisories for the gpt-oss code couldn't be checked, so that half scores as absent.
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.
Documentation and upkeep LFM3-VL-2B +35
gpt-oss-20b 42
The model card earns 17, covering six of the seven points and missing a statement of supported languages. Training data earns 10, a general description with a June 2024 cut-off and no sources or mix. Last change earns 5, because the files haven't changed since August 2025 and the reference code and harmony parser last changed on 1 and 5 November 2025, still within a year on 1 November 2026, while this year's commits only touch the browser tool, CI and a version number. Responsiveness earns 0, with no OpenAI reply to any of the 40 most recent discussions and none at all since August 2025. Version policy earns 5 for a first release kept in its own repository. File health earns 5, since template reports and an install report wait without a reply.
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.
Reach gpt-oss-20b +5
gpt-oss-20b 90
Memory earns 25, since OpenAI's own MXFP4 build is 13.76 GB and a fifth on top is 16.5 GB, just past the 16 GB band, and Ollama's 14 GB build lands in the same 24 GB band. Runtimes earn the full 25 from model code in released Transformers, vLLM and SGLang, the architecture in llama.cpp and the model in Ollama's library. Builds earn 10, because OpenAI ships one quantised precision, MXFP4, and the original and metal folders are the same weights for its reference code. Terms earn 15 for Apache 2.0, whose usage policy only asks users to follow the law. Download earns 10, since the repository isn't gated. Hosted earns 5, with five inference providers live for it on its Hugging Face page on 1 November 2026, while OpenAI's own API lists it with no usable rate limit and isn't counted.
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.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | gpt-oss-20b | LFM3-VL-2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 90 | 85 | gpt-oss-20b +5 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 85 | 40 | gpt-oss-20b +45 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 90 | 90 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 42 | 77 | LFM3-VL-2B +35 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | B 69.9/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | gpt-oss-20b | LFM3-VL-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 | 2026-11-09 |
| 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-20b
gpt-oss-20b is a cousin for reasoning, coding and single tool calls with structured output, under plain Apache 2.0. It needs about 17 GB with a working context, and five inference providers serve it. The main risks are that it trails o4-mini at keeping system instructions above user ones, and OpenAI hasn't answered a report since August 2025.
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
gpt-oss-20b
- Start it with
ollama run gpt-oss:20b(the build that fits the reference machine), orvllm serve openai/gpt-oss-20bwith a current vLLM release rather than the card's pinned vllm==0.10.1+gptoss wheel - Use the harmony format through the chat template or openai-harmony; OpenAI says the model doesn't work correctly without it
- Parse tool calls and reasoning with openai-harmony; calls come on the commentary channel ending in
<|call|>, reasoning on the analysis channel - Set effort with
Reasoning: high(or low, medium) in the system message, orreasoning_effortin the template; medium is the default - Ask for JSON by putting a JSON Schema under
# Response Formatsin the developer message - Drop earlier reasoning after a final answer but pass it back after tool calls, and don't show the analysis channel to users
- Expect one tool call per turn; run several in sequence rather than in parallel
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, gpt-oss-20b or LFM3-VL-2B?
gpt-oss-20b scores 69.9 (B) on agent readiness against LFM3-VL-2B's 61 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. LFM3-VL-2B leads on documentation and upkeep.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/gpt-oss-20b-vs-lfm3-vl-2b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/gpt-oss-20b.json·/api/v1/tools/lfm3-vl-2b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare gpt-oss-20b lfm3-vl-2b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "gpt-oss-20b", "b": "lfm3-vl-2b"}at/mcp, no key