LFM3-1.7B vs MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B

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.

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B 70

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the card shows the tools array going in but not the call coming back, and names no parser. Trained tool calling 20, the template renders several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented or claimed. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking per request, off by default, with the trace between markers. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

LFM3-1.7B 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.

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B 55

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only, no Python in the main repository and no remote code needed. Provenance 15, the files come from the openbmb organisation OpenBMB's GitHub README links to, with a SHA-256 for every weight file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either, and the card has no limitations section. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no security.txt or SECURITY.md.

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.

MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B 90

Memory 25, since OpenBMB's IQ4_XS GGUF with its vision projector is 19.6 GB and needs about 23.6 GB with the fifth added, which fits 24 GB, while its Q4_K_M GGUF, 4-bit safetensors builds and Ollama entry need 32 GB. Runtimes 25, from vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23, Transformers 5.18.0 and later, llama.cpp's own MiniCPM-V 4.7 support and OpenBMB's entry on Ollama. Builds 15, OpenBMB publishes FP8, three 4-bit safetensors builds and GGUF. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, no inference provider is mapped. 25 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 90.