Compare / MiniCPM5 1B vs Llama 3.2 1B

MiniCPM5 1B vs Llama 3.2 1B

Updated November 2026

Verdict

MiniCPM5 1B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 29.5 vs 8.7. On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, MiniCPM5 1B wins 4 and Llama 3.2 1B wins 1. Both need about 1.5 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Llama 3.2 1B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.071 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.

Pick MiniCPM5 1B if…

you want the strongest model overall
you need precise instruction following
you build agents that call tools
you work with long documents
you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)

Pick Llama 3.2 1B if…

you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)

Specifications

	MiniCPM5 1B	Llama 3.2 1B
Small LM Index	29.5 (likely 20–42)	8.7 (likely 8–9)
Lab	OpenBMB (MiniCPM) · China	Meta · United States
Released	2026-05-21	2024-09-25
Parameters	1.1B (dense)	1.2B (dense)
Memory at 4-bit	~1.4 GB	~1.5 GB
Context window	131K tokens	128K tokens
Input	text	text
Reasoning	Hybrid (thinking on/off)	No thinking
License	Apache-2.0	Llama 3.2 Community
API price / 1M tokens	Self-host only	$0.071 ($0.027 in, $0.20 out)
Hugging Face downloads (30 days)	257.9K	1.8M

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	MiniCPM5 1B	Llama 3.2 1B
MMLU-Pro Knowledge	≈ 53	20.0^✓
GPQA Diamond Knowledge	27.8^✓	19.6^✓
Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning	6.5^✓	5.5^✓
AIME Math	≈ 21	0.0^✓
LiveCodeBench Coding	≈ 21	1.9^✓
τ²-Bench Agentic	81.0^✓	0.0^✓
IFBench Instruction following	49.3^✓	22.8^✓
MATH-500 Math	—	14.0^✓
AA-LCR Long context	6.0^✓	6.7^✓

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, MiniCPM5 1B or Llama 3.2 1B?

MiniCPM5 1B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 29.5 vs 8.7. On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, MiniCPM5 1B wins 4 and Llama 3.2 1B wins 1.

Which is cheaper to run?

Only Llama 3.2 1B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.071 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 1.5 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.

Which has the longer context window?

MiniCPM5 1B has the longer context window: 131K tokens against 128K.

Can I use MiniCPM5 1B and Llama 3.2 1B commercially?

MiniCPM5 1B is released under Apache-2.0 and Llama 3.2 1B under Llama 3.2 Community. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.