Phi-4 vs LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

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

Phi-4 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 42 to 33. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Phi-4's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 55 against 8.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 82.6 to 17. LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking does hit back in reasoning, 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 Phi-4 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. LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking gives you the larger context window at 32K, compared with 16K for Phi-4.

Quick Verdict

Pick Phi-4 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you need the larger 32K context window.

Agentic

Phi-4

Phi-4

38.3

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

34.1

44
Terminal-Bench 2.0
34
35
BrowseComp
37
34
OSWorld-Verified
32

Coding

Phi-4

Phi-4

55

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

8.2

82.6
HumanEval
17
55
SWE-bench Pro
7
Coming soon
SWE-bench Verified
10
Coming soon
LiveCodeBench
9

Multimodal & Grounded

Phi-4

Phi-4

46.8

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

32.4

54
MMMU-Pro
27
38
OfficeQA Pro
39

Reasoning

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

Phi-4

31.3

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

38.4

30
LongBench v2
39
33
MRCRv2
42
Coming soon
SimpleQA
29
Coming soon
MuSR
31
Coming soon
BBH
67

Knowledge

Phi-4

Phi-4

53.8

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

27

84.8
MMLU
27
56.1
GPQA
26
52
FrontierScience
31
Coming soon
SuperGPQA
24
Coming soon
OpenBookQA
22
Coming soon
MMLU-Pro
51
Coming soon
HLE
2

Instruction Following

Coming soon

Comparable scores for this category are coming soon. One or both models do not have sourced results here yet.

Coming soon
IFEval
72

Multilingual

Phi-4

Phi-4

67.2

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking

60.7

80.6
MGSM
62
60
MMLU-ProX
60

Mathematics

Coming soon

Comparable scores for this category are coming soon. One or both models do not have sourced results here yet.

Coming soon
AIME 2023
28
Coming soon
AIME 2024
30
Coming soon
AIME 2025
29
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2023
24
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2024
26
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2025
25
Coming soon
BRUMO 2025
27
Coming soon
MATH-500
61

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Phi-4 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Phi-4 is ahead overall, 42 to 33. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 82.6 and 17.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Phi-4 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Phi-4 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 53.8 versus 27. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Phi-4 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Phi-4 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 55 versus 8.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Phi-4 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 38.4 versus 31.3. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Phi-4 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Phi-4 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 38.3 versus 34.1. 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, Phi-4 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Phi-4 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 46.8 versus 32.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Phi-4 or LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking?

Phi-4 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 67.2 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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