# LFM3-1.7B vs Qwen3.5-9B (slim)

> LFM3-1.7B and Qwen3.5-9B score within a point of each other for open-weight models you run yourself, 61 and 60.5 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lfm3-1-7b-vs-qwen3-5-9b.md (~8,900 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lfm3-1-7b-vs-qwen3-5-9b.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lfm3-1-7b-vs-qwen3-5-9b
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-10
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

LFM3-1.7B and Qwen3.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.5 (C). Qwen3.5-9B leads on risk. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- LFM3-1.7B: C 61, rank #69 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lfm3-1-7b.min.md
- Qwen3.5-9B: C 60.5, rank #87 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/qwen3-5-9b.min.md
- LFM3-1.7B, good 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 Agent interface, 100 against 70; Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 34.
- Qwen3.5-9B, good for Agents that want a small multimodal tool-calling model on a laptop or a 16 GB GPU, under a plain licence Ahead on Risk, 55 against 40.

| Category | LFM3-1.7B | Qwen3.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 85 | 85 |
| Risk (20%) | 40 | 55 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 100 | 70 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 67 | 34 |

| Fact (where they differ) | LFM3-1.7B | Qwen3.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Liquid AI | Alibaba (Qwen team) |
| Licence | LFM Open License v1.0 (free commercial use below $10M annual revenue) | Apache-2.0 |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-09 | 2026-03-02 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Documentation and upkeep, LFM3-1.7B +33: 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-ste…); Qwen3.5-9B 34 (Model card 14, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters, context and 201 languages but gives no limitations and no knowledge cut-off.)
- 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.); Qwen3.5-9B 70 (Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository.)
- Risk, Qwen3.5-9B +15: LFM3-1.7B 40 (File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25).); Qwen3.5-9B 55 (File safety 25, safetensors only and nothing from the repository runs on load or to build prompts.)