DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) vs LFM2.5-350M

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

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)· LFM2.5-350M

Quick Verdict

Pick DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. LFM2.5-350M only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 43 to 39. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)'s sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 32.5 against 23.8. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU-Pro, 53% to 20.0%. LFM2.5-350M does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while LFM2.5-350M 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 V3.1 (Reasoning) gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 32K for LFM2.5-350M.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*Free*
SpeedN/AN/A
TTFTN/AN/A
Context128K32K

Decision framing

BenchLM keeps the benchmark table and the operator tradeoffs on the same page so a better score does not hide a materially slower, pricier, or smaller-context model.

Runtime metrics show N/A when BenchLM does not have a sourced snapshot for that exact model. The scoring rules and freshness policy are documented on the methodology page.

BenchmarkDeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning)LFM2.5-350M
Agentic
Terminal-Bench 2.042%
BrowseComp48%
OSWorld-Verified44%
Coding
HumanEval26%
SWE-bench Verified14%
LiveCodeBench16%
SWE-bench Pro25%
Multimodal & Grounded
MMMU-Pro37%
OfficeQA Pro47%
Reasoning
MuSR30%
BBH64%
LongBench v257%
MRCRv256%
KnowledgeDeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) wins
MMLU34%
GPQA33%30.6%
SuperGPQA31%
MMLU-Pro53%20.0%
HLE10%
FrontierScience37%
SimpleQA32%
Instruction FollowingLFM2.5-350M wins
IFEval70%77.0%
Multilingual
MGSM64%
MMLU-ProX61%
Mathematics
AIME 202334%
AIME 202436%
AIME 202535%
HMMT Feb 202330%
HMMT Feb 202432%
HMMT Feb 202531%
BRUMO 202533%
MATH-50062%
Frequently Asked Questions (3)

Which is better, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-350M?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) is ahead overall, 43 to 39. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU-Pro, where the scores are 53% and 20.0%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-350M?

DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 32.5 versus 23.8. Inside this category, MMLU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, DeepSeek V3.1 (Reasoning) or LFM2.5-350M?

LFM2.5-350M has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 77 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

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