Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
LFM3-1.7B vs LFM3-Omni-2B
LFM3-1.7B and LFM3-Omni-2B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). 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 laptop, phone or small server that need tool calling and a long context from a model under 2 GB at 4 bits
Ahead on
- Reach, 85 against 80
- Agent interface, 100 against 70
- Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 49
Watch for
vLLM and SGLang have no released support, though the card lists both
Best for Voice and camera agents on a laptop or phone that want one small model for hearing, seeing, speaking and calling tools
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
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.
Agent interface LFM3-1.7B +30
LFM3-1.7B 100
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (12,129 characters), with roles, 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 the model was trained on tool calls and agentic traces and with reinforcement learning inside agent harnesses. Structured output 15, Liquid's API guide documents response_format with a JSON Schema, with lfm3-1.7b as the model in its examples, and says the schema is checked before generation starts. Reasoning control 10, the card documents enable_thinking=False in the chat template to turn reasoning off per request, with reasoning on by default inside think tags, and preserve_thinking for earlier turns. Context 10, 256K tokens per the card, which says the mid-training stage extended the context window to 256K, and max_position_embeddings 262144 in config.json. 20 + 25 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 100.
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.
Documentation and upkeep LFM3-1.7B +18
LFM3-1.7B 67
Model card 17, Intended use (local agents, tool calling, structured outputs, fine-tuning), a limitation (not recommended for agentic coding or complex multi-step reasoning), architecture (24 layers: 13 gated short convolutions, 5 sliding-window and 6 global attention), parameters (1.73B), context (256K) and 16 languages. Training data 5, A general description: 22T tokens of pre-training in two stages with the kinds of data added since LFM2, 1.75T tokens of supervised fine-tuning, then mixed reinforcement learning, distillation from six specialist teachers and agentic reinforcement learning. 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 10, Of the 22 discussions that aren't pull requests (27 October to 8 November 2026), 7 have a reply from a LiquidAI member, which is some. 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 architecture, the 262,144-token context and the thinking switch. 17 + 5 + 20 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 67.
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 LFM3-1.7B +5
LFM3-1.7B 85
Memory 30, Liquid's Q4_K_M GGUF is 1.10 GB, and 1.10 GB × 1.2 = 1.3 GB, which fits 8 GB, well inside the 16 GB line. Runtimes 15, Released llama.cpp has the lfm3 architecture (src/models/lfm3.cpp at b12242), Ollama's library has an lfm3 entry, and LM Studio's catalogue runs the architecture (its liquid/lfm3-vl-2b entry; lmstudio-community publishes a GGUF of this model). 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 lfm3-1.7b among its models, so the publisher hosts it. 30 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 85.
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.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | LFM3-1.7B | LFM3-Omni-2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 85 | 80 | LFM3-1.7B +5 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 40 | 40 | even |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 100 | 70 | LFM3-1.7B +30 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 67 | 49 | LFM3-1.7B +18 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | LFM3-1.7B | LFM3-Omni-2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Liquid AI | Liquid AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | LFM Open License v1.0 (free commercial use below $10M annual revenue) | LFM Open License v1.0 (free commercial use below $10M annual revenue) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-09 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
Verdicts
LFM3-1.7B
A 1.73B model that fits an 8 GB machine with room to spare, with a documented tool-call format, deferred tools, a thinking switch and a 256K context. It runs today in llama.cpp, Ollama and LM Studio only, loads in Transformers through repository code, and has no safety results, security contact or data sources.
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
LFM3-1.7B
- Start it with
llama-server -hf LiquidAI/LFM3-1.7B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinjaorollama run lfm3 - Use temperature 0.1, top_k 50 and repetition penalty 1.1 for chat, tools and agents, per the card
- Pass
enable_thinking=Falsefor direct answers, and expect it to reason anyway on hard tasks - For a large tool catalogue mark tools
defer_loadingand give it a search tool - Don't plan on vLLM or SGLang until a release carries LFM3
- Liquid doesn't recommend it for agentic coding or complex multi-step reasoning
LFM3-Omni-2B
- Start it with
llama-server -hf LiquidAI/LFM3-Omni-2B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinjaorollama run lfm3-omni - Greedy decoding for text. For speech use audio_temperature 0.4 and audio_repetition_penalty 1.2, per the card
- The context is 32K, and llama.cpp samples video at 2 frames a second up to 384 frames
- Parse tool calls yourself from the XML it returns
- It doesn't reason, so don't pass enable_thinking
- Validate JSON output yourself
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, LFM3-1.7B or LFM3-Omni-2B?
LFM3-1.7B and LFM3-Omni-2B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C).
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/lfm3-1-7b-vs-lfm3-omni-2b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/lfm3-1-7b.json·/api/v1/tools/lfm3-omni-2b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare lfm3-1-7b lfm3-omni-2b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "lfm3-1-7b", "b": "lfm3-omni-2b"}at/mcp, no key