LFM3-VL-2B vs MiniMax-M2.7

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.

MiniMax-M2.7 42

The model card earns 2, stating only intended use and leaving out limitations, architecture, parameters, context, natural languages and a cut-off. Training data earns nothing, since only the training process is described. The last change earns 20, a card commit on 26 October 2026 that renames a MiniMax Agent link to MiniMax Code, 9 days before this check; the files, template and code last changed on 20 April 2026. Responsiveness earns 10, with a MiniMax reply in 8 of 36 discussions, none since June. Version policy earns 5, since earlier and later models sit in their own repositories without dated notes. File health earns 5, because a report that it doesn't load in Transformers v5 waits without a reply.

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.

MiniMax-M2.7 60

Memory earns 5. MiniMax only publishes its 230 GB FP8 release, and the smallest build of 4-bit or better from a runtime's own library is LM Studio's Q4_K_M GGUF at 138.3 GB, about 166 GB with the fifth added, so it needs more than our 107.4 GB machine and fits within 256 GB. Runtimes earn the full 25, with model code in released vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Transformers, an LM Studio catalogue entry, and Ollama 0.40.14, whose pinned llama.cpp b11963 has the minimax-m2 architecture (capped at 25). Builds earn 10 for one publisher precision, the FP8 release. Terms earn 5, since the licence today allows only personal, research and non-profit use without MiniMax's written authorisation. Download earns 10, with no gate or account. Hosted earns 5, since Novita, Featherless AI and DeepInfra serve it through Hugging Face, while MiniMax's own API is closed to new users and retires it on 18 November 2026.

LFM3-VL-2B 90

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (12,129 characters), with roles, images and video, 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 its fine-tuning mix included tool calling and agentic traces. Structured output 5, the card's vLLM and SGLang commands set a structured-output backend and its fine-tuning table has a JSON extraction notebook, but nothing says how to ask this model for JSON. Liquid's API guide documents response_format with lfm3-1.7b as its example. Reasoning control 10, Liquid's chat-template page documents enable_thinking=False in apply_chat_template for LFM3, with reasoning on by default inside think tags, and the card documents preserve_thinking and reports a no-thinking configuration in its benchmarks. Context 10, 128K tokens of input and output per the card, and max_position_embeddings 128000 for the language model in config.json. 20 + 25 + 20 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 90.

MiniMax-M2.7 75

The chat template earns 20 for chat_template.jinja in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 25, as MiniMax's own guide documents how tools go in and how calls come back, gives a parsing function, and its deployment guides name the vLLM and SGLang parsers. Trained tool calling earns 20, with several invoke blocks in one call. Structured output earns nothing, since JSON output isn't documented or claimed. Reasoning control earns nothing, because thinking is always on with no documented way to turn it off or budget it. Context earns 10 for 204,800 tokens in the config with no position scaling.

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.

MiniMax-M2.7 30

File safety earns 15, safetensors only with no pickle files, less 10 because every documented loading route passes trust_remote_code for the repository's Python. Provenance earns the full 15, files in the organisation MiniMax links to with a SHA-256 for each shard. Safety evaluation and agent guidance earn nothing, as MiniMax publishes neither. Licence risk earns nothing (read 21 October 2026). The Prohibited Uses appendix goes beyond the law, MiniMax swapped a commercial licence for a non-commercial one two days after release, and neither that swap nor the amendment three days later carries a dated note. The security programme earns nothing, with no security.txt, disclosure policy, SECURITY.md or advisories.