Compare / LFM2.5 2.6B vs SmolLM3 3B
LFM2.5 2.6B vs SmolLM3 3B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
LFM2.5 2.6B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 43.2 vs 30.4. On the 4 benchmarks both labs report, LFM2.5 2.6B wins 4 and SmolLM3 3B wins 0. Both need about 3 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only LFM2.5 2.6B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.39 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.
Pick LFM2.5 2.6B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you need math and reasoning
- you need precise instruction following
- you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
- you work with long documents
Pick SmolLM3 3B if…
- you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Specifications
| LFM2.5 2.6B | SmolLM3 3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 43.2 (likely 39–48) | 30.4 (likely 27–35) |
| Lab | Liquid AI · United States | Hugging Face (SmolLM) · Europe |
| Released | 2026-07-28 | 2025-07-08 |
| Parameters | 2.7B (dense) | 3.1B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~2.3 GB | ~3 GB |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 64K tokens |
| Input | text | text |
| Reasoning | No thinking | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | LFM Open License | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | $0.39 ($0.35 in, $0.50 out) | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 69K | 567.6K |
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 | LFM2.5 2.6B | SmolLM3 3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 57.8 | 41.7 |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 5.9 | ≈ 2 |
| AIME Math | 51.9 | 36.7 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 59.4 | 30.0 |
| SWE-bench Verified Coding | 18.0 | ≈ 12 |
| IFBench Instruction following | 59.2 | — |
| Multilingual MMLU Multilingual | — | 64.1 |
| IFEval Instruction following | 95.4 | 71.2 |
| BFCL Agentic | 56.9 | — |
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, LFM2.5 2.6B or SmolLM3 3B?
LFM2.5 2.6B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 43.2 vs 30.4. On the 4 benchmarks both labs report, LFM2.5 2.6B wins 4 and SmolLM3 3B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Only LFM2.5 2.6B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.39 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 3 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
LFM2.5 2.6B has the longer context window: 128K tokens against 64K.
Can I use LFM2.5 2.6B and SmolLM3 3B commercially?
LFM2.5 2.6B is released under LFM Open License and SmolLM3 3B 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.