# MAI-Thinking-1 vs ZAYA1-8B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for MAI-Thinking-1 and ZAYA1-8B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/mai-thinking-1-vs-zaya1-8b
- Last updated: September 4, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 7
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick ZAYA1-8B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. MAI-Thinking-1 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- ZAYA1-8B leads overall 58 to 52.27.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 94.7 for MAI-Thinking-1 and 35.6 for ZAYA1-8B.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is IFBench in Instruction Following, with scores of 85% and 52.6%.
- MAI-Thinking-1 also has the larger context window at 256K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | MAI-Thinking-1 | ZAYA1-8B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Microsoft | Zyphra |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 256K | 131K |
| Overall Score | 52.27 | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 14 | 11 |
| Pricing (input/output) | N/A | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 51.7 (Estimated · #53/151)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 48.1 (Estimated · #79/151)

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 46% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | Coming soon | 39.2% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 51.8 (Estimated · #60/183)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 87.7% | 65.8% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 52.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 46.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: Coming soon
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Graphwalks BFS 128K | 90% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 53.3 (Estimated · #68/181)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 45.3 (Estimated · #116/181)

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 84.2% | 71% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| GPQA-D | 84.2% | 71.0% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| MMLU-Pro | 85% | 74.2% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| SimpleQA | 31% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: MAI-Thinking-1
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 94.7 (#1/120)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 35.6 (#108/120)

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 85% | 52.6% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| IFEval | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 73.4 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 62.6 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | MAI-Thinking-1 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 97% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | 94.5% | 89.1% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 84.9% | 71.6% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| IMOAnswerBench | Coming soon | 59.3% | Coming soon |
| Apex | Coming soon | 32.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, MAI-Thinking-1 or ZAYA1-8B?

ZAYA1-8B is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between MAI-Thinking-1 and ZAYA1-8B?

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 94.7 for MAI-Thinking-1 and 35.6 for ZAYA1-8B.

### How many benchmarks does MAI-Thinking-1 cover on BenchLM?

MAI-Thinking-1 currently has 14 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does ZAYA1-8B cover on BenchLM?

ZAYA1-8B currently has 11 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [MAI-Thinking-1 vs ZAYA1-74B-Preview](/compare/mai-thinking-1-vs-zaya1-74b-preview)
- [ZAYA1-8B vs ZAYA1-74B-Preview](/compare/zaya1-74b-preview-vs-zaya1-8b)
- [MAI-Thinking-1 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-mai-thinking-1)
- [ZAYA1-8B vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-zaya1-8b)

## Explore More

- [MAI-Thinking-1 profile](/models/mai-thinking-1)
- [ZAYA1-8B profile](/models/zaya1-8b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)