LFM3-1.7B vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

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.

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 36

Model card 11 of 20, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, but limitations, languages and a knowledge cut-off aren't. Training data 0, not described beyond a token count relative to an earlier model. Last change 15, the FP8 config fix on 31 August 2026, 63 days before 2 November. Responsiveness 0, Qwen answered none of the 40 most recent questions and reports (29 to 79, 27 August to 26 October), its only reply came in the first week. Version policy 5, a first release with nothing replaced. File health 5, the files agree with the card, but a 19 October report about the template and a pull request to fix it still wait without a reply. 11 + 0 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 36.

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.

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 70

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10 of 25, the format lives only in the template and the parser name only in serving commands, and Alibaba doesn't describe how tools are declared or returned. Trained tool calling 20, the template renders several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented for the weights. Reasoning control 10, thinking turns off per request, reasoning_effort budgets it and the card shows the reasoning coming back in reasoning_content. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native.

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.

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 65

Memory 5 of 30, the smallest listed 4-bit build is Ollama's 120 GB q4_K_M, 144 GB with a fifth added, which is beyond the reference machine and inside 256 GB. Ollama's Apple-only 105 GB MLX build isn't among the builds and would land in the same band. Runtimes 25, released versions of llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers all run the qwen4_exp architecture. Builds 10 of 15, Alibaba's only quantised build is FP8. Terms 10 of 15, a custom licence that's free for commercial use except for model-as-a-service and coding or office assistant businesses, which need a separate licence. Download 10, neither repository is gated. Hosted 5, Hugging Face lists two live providers, Featherless AI for the BF16 repository and Nscale for the FP8 build, and Alibaba's Qwen Cloud serves Qwen3.8-Flash, which the card says is based on these weights.

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.

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 45

File safety 25, safetensors only and nothing from the repository runs to load it or build prompts. Provenance 15, the files are in the Qwen organisation that Qwen's GitHub links to, and every file has a checksum. Safety evaluation 0, none published on the card or in the technical report. Agent guidance 0, nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 5 of 15, 5 off for the field-of-use limit on model-as-a-service and coding or office assistant businesses and 5 off for the naming duty above a user or revenue threshold. Security programme 0, no security.txt, disclosure policy or security contact for Qwen was found, and Alibaba's group security centre couldn't be checked, so it's scored as absent.