Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
MAI-Thinking-1
65
Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct
27
Verified leaderboard positions: MAI-Thinking-1 #23 · Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct unranked
Pick MAI-Thinking-1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
Coding
+33.8 difference
Knowledge
+29.0 difference
Inst. Following
+9.2 difference
MAI-Thinking-1
Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
256K
128K
Pick MAI-Thinking-1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
MAI-Thinking-1 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 65 to 27. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
MAI-Thinking-1's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 71 against 37.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 87.7% to 37.2%.
MAI-Thinking-1 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct 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. MAI-Thinking-1 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct.
MAI-Thinking-1 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 65 to 27. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 87.7% and 37.2%.
MAI-Thinking-1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 69.9 versus 40.9. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
MAI-Thinking-1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 71 versus 37.2. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
MAI-Thinking-1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 85 versus 75.8. Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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