Compare / Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs LLaDA2.2 mini
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs LLaDA2.2 mini
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker scores higher on the Small LM Index: 60.9 vs 29.7. On the 4 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 4 and LLaDA2.2 mini wins 0. Both need about 11.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you need math and reasoning
- you build agents that call tools
- you work with long documents
- you need image input
Pick LLaDA2.2 mini if…
No clear advantage in the data we have.
Specifications
| Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | LLaDA2.2 mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 60.9 (likely 59–63) | 29.7 (likely 26–34) |
| Lab | ServiceNow (Apriel) · United States | InclusionAI (Ling) · China |
| Released | 2025-12-04 | 2026-09-05 |
| Parameters | 14.9B (dense) | 16.3B (1.4B active, MoE) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~11.4 GB | ~11 GB |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 131K tokens |
| Input | text, image | text |
| Reasoning | Always thinks | No thinking |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 1.2K | 4K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | LLaDA2.2 mini |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 79.0 | ≈ 57 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 73.0 | 44.4 |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 10.0 | ≈ 2 |
| AIME Math | 88.0 | 35.1 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | ≈ 70 | 28.1 |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 14.0 | — |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | 64.6 | 57.5 |
| IFBench Instruction following | — | 24.9 |
| MMMU-Pro Vision | 60.3 | — |
| BFCL Agentic | 63.5 | 47.7 |
| AA-LCR Long context | 50.0 | — |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker or LLaDA2.2 mini?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker scores higher on the Small LM Index: 60.9 vs 29.7. On the 4 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 4 and LLaDA2.2 mini wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 11.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker has the longer context window: 262K tokens against 131K.
Can I use Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker and LLaDA2.2 mini commercially?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker is released under MIT and LLaDA2.2 mini under Apache-2.0. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.