DeepSeek V3.1 vs LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

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

DeepSeek V3.1 has the cleaner overall profile here, landing at 35 versus 33. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

DeepSeek V3.1's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 39.5 against 32.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 25 to 17. LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking is the reasoning model in the pair, while DeepSeek V3.1 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 gives you the larger context window at 128K, compared with 32K for LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking.

Quick Verdict

Pick DeepSeek V3.1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

DeepSeek V3.1

32.9

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

34.1

29
Terminal-Bench 2.0
34
39
BrowseComp
37
33
OSWorld-Verified
32

Coding

DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1

14.8

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

8.2

25
HumanEval
17
13
SWE-bench Verified
10
15
LiveCodeBench
9
15
SWE-bench Pro
7

Multimodal & Grounded

DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1

39.5

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

32.4

35
MMMU-Pro
27
45
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1

40.7

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

38.4

31
SimpleQA
29
29
MuSR
31
61
BBH
67
46
LongBench v2
39
48
MRCRv2
42

Knowledge

DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1

30.5

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

27

33
MMLU
27
32
GPQA
26
30
SuperGPQA
24
28
OpenBookQA
22
53
MMLU-Pro
51
2
HLE
2
37
FrontierScience
31

Instruction Following

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

DeepSeek V3.1

67

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

72

67
IFEval
72

Multilingual

DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1

60.8

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

60.7

64
MGSM
62
59
MMLU-ProX
60

Mathematics

DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek V3.1

44.2

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

42.3

33
AIME 2023
28
35
AIME 2024
30
34
AIME 2025
29
29
HMMT Feb 2023
24
31
HMMT Feb 2024
26
30
HMMT Feb 2025
25
32
BRUMO 2025
27
59
MATH-500
61

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, DeepSeek V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

DeepSeek V3.1 is ahead overall, 35 to 33. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 25 and 17.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

DeepSeek V3.1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 30.5 versus 27. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

DeepSeek V3.1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 14.8 versus 8.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, DeepSeek V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

DeepSeek V3.1 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 44.2 versus 42.3. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, DeepSeek V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

DeepSeek V3.1 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 40.7 versus 38.4. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 34.1 versus 32.9. 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 V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

DeepSeek V3.1 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 39.5 versus 32.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, DeepSeek V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

DeepSeek V3.1 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 60.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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