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Compare / LFM2.5 24B-A2B vs Magistral Small 1.2

LFM2.5 24B-A2B vs Magistral Small 1.2

Updated November 2026

Verdict

LFM2.5 24B-A2B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 61.4 vs 55.9, although their likely ranges overlap, so the lead is not certain. On the 1 benchmark both labs report, LFM2.5 24B-A2B wins 1 and Magistral Small 1.2 wins 0. Both need about 16.9 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only LFM2.5 24B-A2B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.21 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.

Pick LFM2.5 24B-A2B if…

  • you want the strongest model overall
  • you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself

Pick Magistral Small 1.2 if…

  • you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)
  • you need image input

Specifications

LFM2.5 24B-A2BMagistral Small 1.2
Small LM Index61.4 (likely 57–65)55.9 (likely 51–60)
LabLiquid AI · United StatesMistral AI · Europe
Released2026-10-132025-09-17
Parameters24B (2B active, MoE)24B (dense)
Memory at 4-bit~15.7 GB~16.9 GB
Context window128K tokens128K tokens
Inputtexttext, image
ReasoningNo thinkingAlways thinks
LicenseLFM Open LicenseApache-2.0
API price / 1M tokens$0.21 ($0.050 in, $0.70 out)Self-host only
Hugging Face downloads (30 days)32.8K29.7K

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.

BenchmarkLFM2.5 24B-A2BMagistral Small 1.2
GPQA Diamond Knowledge74.470.1
Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning7.4≈ 9
AIME Math≈ 8577.3
LiveCodeBench Coding≈ 7170.9
SWE-bench Verified Coding51.0≈ 39
IFBench Instruction following74.7—
IFEval Instruction following96.8—
BFCL Agentic65.0—
MATH-500 Math96.0—
SciCode Coding32.7—

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 24B-A2B or Magistral Small 1.2?

LFM2.5 24B-A2B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 61.4 vs 55.9, although their likely ranges overlap, so the lead is not certain. On the 1 benchmark both labs report, LFM2.5 24B-A2B wins 1 and Magistral Small 1.2 wins 0.

Which is cheaper to run?

Only LFM2.5 24B-A2B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.21 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 16.9 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.

Which has the longer context window?

Both have a 128K-token context window.

Can I use LFM2.5 24B-A2B and Magistral Small 1.2 commercially?

LFM2.5 24B-A2B is released under LFM Open License and Magistral Small 1.2 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.

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