DeepSeek-R1 vs LFM2-24B-A2B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

DeepSeek-R1 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 43 to 38. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

DeepSeek-R1's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 44.5 against 33.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 42 to 30. LFM2-24B-A2B does hit back in multilingual, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

DeepSeek-R1 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.55 input / $2.19 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.03 input / $0.12 output per 1M tokens for LFM2-24B-A2B. That is roughly 18.3x on output cost alone. DeepSeek-R1 is the reasoning model in the pair, while LFM2-24B-A2B is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. DeepSeek-R1 gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 32K for LFM2-24B-A2B.

Quick Verdict

Pick DeepSeek-R1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. LFM2-24B-A2B only becomes the better choice if multilingual is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

DeepSeek-R1

DeepSeek-R1

44.5

LFM2-24B-A2B

33.4

42
Terminal-Bench 2.0
30
49
BrowseComp
38
44
OSWorld-Verified
34

Coding

DeepSeek-R1

DeepSeek-R1

21.5

LFM2-24B-A2B

18

36
HumanEval
42
17
SWE-bench Verified
18
19
LiveCodeBench
17
25
SWE-bench Pro
19

Multimodal & Grounded

DeepSeek-R1

DeepSeek-R1

47.5

LFM2-24B-A2B

41.7

43
MMMU-Pro
39
53
OfficeQA Pro
45

Reasoning

DeepSeek-R1

DeepSeek-R1

50.9

LFM2-24B-A2B

46.6

42
SimpleQA
44
40
MuSR
42
66
BBH
63
58
LongBench v2
48
57
MRCRv2
45

Knowledge

DeepSeek-R1

DeepSeek-R1

37.9

LFM2-24B-A2B

35.6

44
MMLU
46
43
GPQA
45
41
SuperGPQA
43
39
OpenBookQA
41
52
MMLU-Pro
51
14
HLE
4
44
FrontierScience
43

Instruction Following

DeepSeek-R1

DeepSeek-R1

69

LFM2-24B-A2B

68

69
IFEval
68

Multilingual

LFM2-24B-A2B

DeepSeek-R1

60.4

LFM2-24B-A2B

61.4

61
MGSM
64
60
MMLU-ProX
60

Mathematics

DeepSeek-R1

DeepSeek-R1

52.5

LFM2-24B-A2B

50.4

44
AIME 2023
46
46
AIME 2024
48
45
AIME 2025
47
40
HMMT Feb 2023
42
42
HMMT Feb 2024
44
41
HMMT Feb 2025
43
43
BRUMO 2025
45
64
MATH-500
57

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

DeepSeek-R1 is ahead overall, 43 to 38. The biggest single separator in this matchup is Terminal-Bench 2.0, where the scores are 42 and 30.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 37.9 versus 35.6. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 21.5 versus 18. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 52.5 versus 50.4. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 50.9 versus 46.6. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 44.5 versus 33.4. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 47.5 versus 41.7. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

DeepSeek-R1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 69 versus 68. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, DeepSeek-R1 or LFM2-24B-A2B?

LFM2-24B-A2B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.4 versus 60.4. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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