Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

LFM3-VL-2B vs Nanbeige4.3-33B

LFM3-VL-2B and Nanbeige4.3-33B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.8 (C). Nanbeige4.3-33B leads on risk. 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

LFM3-VL-2B C

Best for Agents on a laptop, phone or robot that need to read screens, documents, images and video from a model under 2 GB at 4 bits

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 80
  • Agent interface, 90 against 85
  • Documentation and upkeep, 77 against 56

Watch for

vLLM and SGLang support is unreleased, which the card says itself

Nanbeige4.3-33B C

Best for Agents with a 32 GB GPU (INT4) or more, or the 128 GB reference machine at BF16, that want an Apache-tagged 33B model for long coding and tool loops.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 60 against 40

Watch for

Independent results so far are Artificial Analysis's alone (Intelligence Index v5.0 20.4, Terminal-Bench 4.0 29.8 per cent); the card's other agentic numbers are Nanbeige's own runs

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.

Documentation and upkeep LFM3-VL-2B +21

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.

Nanbeige4.3-33B 56

The model card earns 11, with intended use, parameters, context and languages but no limitations, architecture or cut-off. Training data earns 0, as nothing describes it. Last change earns 20 for the quantised builds of 31 October 2026. Responsiveness earns 10, a Nanbeige member answering nine of 30 discussions. Version policy earns 5 for a first release, with a config change made and reverted under bare commit titles. File health earns 10, the files and the card agreeing.

Risk Nanbeige4.3-33B +20

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.

Nanbeige4.3-33B 60

File safety earns 25, safetensors only and no repository code, so the card's trust_remote_code has nothing to run. Provenance earns 15, the lab's own organisation as its arXiv report links it, with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation earns 0 and agent guidance 0, since neither card says anything on either. Licence risk keeps all 15 under Apache 2.0. The security programme earns 5 for BOSS Zhipin's security response centre, which isn't linked to the model.

Reach LFM3-VL-2B +5

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.

Nanbeige4.3-33B 80

Memory earns 20, since Nanbeige's INT4 build is 22.57 GB, about 27 GB with a fifth added, which fits 32 GB. Runtimes earn 20 from released vLLM, SGLang, Transformers and llama.cpp, which all run the Llama architecture, and Ollama and LM Studio have no build. Builds earn 15 for Nanbeige's INT4, INT8 and FP8 builds of 31 October 2026. Terms earn 15 for Apache 2.0 with nothing added, though only the metadata names it. Download earns 10, with no gate. Hosted earns 0, as no provider or Nanbeige API serves it.

Agent interface LFM3-VL-2B +5

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.

Nanbeige4.3-33B 85

The chat template earns 20, Jinja in tokenizer_config.json. The tool-calling format earns 25, with the XML call format in the template and the qwen3_coder parser named for vLLM and SGLang. Trained tool calling earns 20, several calls per turn in the template. Structured output earns 0, as nothing mentions it. Reasoning control earns 10, thinking switched per request with the qwen3 reasoning parser named. Context earns 10 for 512K set in the config with no scaling.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLFM3-VL-2BNanbeige4.3-33BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258580LFM3-VL-2B +5
Risk20%204060Nanbeige4.3-33B +20
Agent interface10%109085LFM3-VL-2B +5
Documentation and upkeep10%107756LFM3-VL-2B +21
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 60.8/100

Facts side by side

FactLFM3-VL-2BNanbeige4.3-33B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorLiquid AINanbeige LLM Lab (BOSS Zhipin)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceLFM Open License v1.0 (free commercial use below $10M annual revenue)Apache-2.0 (Hub metadata only; the repository has no LICENSE file)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-11-092026-10-31
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

LFM3-VL-2B

A 1.92B vision model that reads images and video on an 8 GB machine, with a documented tool-call format and thinking. It runs today in llama.cpp, Ollama and LM Studio, while vLLM and SGLang support is still unreleased. Transformers needs repository code, and there are no safety results, security contact or data sources.

Nanbeige4.3-33B

A dense 33B Llama-architecture cousin for long agentic coding and office tasks, with per-request thinking, XML tool calls that stock vLLM and SGLang parse, and 512K of context. Nanbeige's INT4 build needs about 27 GB. Artificial Analysis's first independent runs give it 20.4 on its Intelligence Index, and there are no safety results, training data notes or licence file.

Before you call either

LFM3-VL-2B

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf LiquidAI/LFM3-VL-2B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja or ollama run lfm3-vl, with llama.cpp b11960 or later
  2. Use temperature 0.1, top_k 50 and repetition penalty 1.1, per the card
  3. Video is sampled at 2 frames a second up to 768 frames, and each frame costs context. Video input in llama.cpp needs ffmpeg
  4. Don't plan on vLLM or SGLang until a release carries LFM3-VL
  5. Validate JSON output yourself
  6. Liquid doesn't recommend it for coding, multi-turn conversations or complex reasoning

Nanbeige4.3-33B

  1. Serve with vllm serve Nanbeige/Nanbeige4.3-33B --enable-auto-tool-choice --reasoning-parser qwen3 --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, as the card says, or SGLang with the same two parsers
  2. On a 32 GB GPU use Nanbeige/Nanbeige4.3-33B-INT4 with the same vLLM or SGLang flags; the INT8 and FP8 builds need about 43 GB
  3. Keep tool_call_format at its default xml, since qwen3_coder parses that format; the json option writes Hermes-style JSON calls, which need a different parser such as vLLM's hermes
  4. Pass chat_template_kwargs {"preserve_thinking": true} for multi-turn tool use and coding, and {"enable_thinking": false} to skip reasoning, as the card recommends
  5. Use temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and up to 65,536 new tokens for agent work, and temperature 0.6 for reasoning and chat, per the card
  6. Send your own system prompt, since without one the template injects a Chinese identity line, or a Chinese tool-expert prompt when tools are passed
  7. Send one system message at the start only, as the template raises an error for a later one
  8. In plain Transformers pass use_cache=True to generate, since config.json and generation_config.json set it false; trust_remote_code isn't needed

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, LFM3-VL-2B or Nanbeige4.3-33B?

LFM3-VL-2B and Nanbeige4.3-33B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.8 (C). Nanbeige4.3-33B leads on risk.

Other comparisons with LFM3-VL-2B or Nanbeige4.3-33B

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