Compare / Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs Phi-4-reasoning-plus
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs Phi-4-reasoning-plus
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker scores higher on the Small LM Index: 60.9 vs 54.4. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 3 and Phi-4-reasoning-plus 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 work with long documents
- you need image input
Pick Phi-4-reasoning-plus if…
No clear advantage in the data we have.
Specifications
| Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | Phi-4-reasoning-plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 60.9 (likely 59–63) | 54.4 (likely 50–59) |
| Lab | ServiceNow (Apriel) · United States | Microsoft (Phi) · United States |
| Released | 2025-12-04 | 2025-04-30 |
| Parameters | 14.9B (dense) | 14.7B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~11.4 GB | ~11.4 GB |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 32K tokens |
| Input | text, image | text |
| Reasoning | Always thinks | Always thinks |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 1.2K | 4.9K |
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 | Phi-4-reasoning-plus |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 79.0 | 76.0 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 73.0 | 69.3 |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 10.0 | ≈ 8 |
| AIME Math | 88.0 | 78.0 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | ≈ 70 | 53.1 |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 14.0 | — |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | 64.6 | — |
| MMMU-Pro Vision | 60.3 | — |
| BFCL Agentic | 63.5 | — |
| 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 Phi-4-reasoning-plus?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker scores higher on the Small LM Index: 60.9 vs 54.4. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 3 and Phi-4-reasoning-plus 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 32K.
Can I use Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker and Phi-4-reasoning-plus commercially?
Both are released under the MIT license. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.