Model reference · open weights

LFM3

NEW · this week LLMs LiquidAI Text gen 4 builds Its own licence terms 18k dl/mo

LFM3 is an open-weight language model from LiquidAI. LFM3-1.7B-MLX-4bit (MLX) weighs 973 MB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.

For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.

  • LFM3 is a 1.7B parameter text-generation model by LiquidAI, distributed in GGUF format for local inference on CPUs and GPUs.
  • It supports English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Korean, among other languages.
  • The model is available under an "other" license and includes a Quantization-Aware Distillation checkpoint to maintain accuracy at Q4_0 quantization.

Summary of the LiquidAI/LFM3-1.7B-GGUF model card, 2026-10-29. The estimate below is for another build of the family.

What it is

Released byLiquidAI
Released2026-10-24
VRAM973 MB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for LFM3-1.7B-MLX-4bit (MLX)

973 MBweights, file size
39 MBcache per 1K tokens
45 MBwindow cache per request
1.9 GBruntime overhead, at least
262,144 tokenscontext max
CardRequests at onceContext maxMemory
8K each32K each
RTX 3060 12 GB236217K11.6 GB
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB349all 256K15.4 GB
RTX 3090 24 GB5615all 256K23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GB5615all 256K23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GB7721all 256K31.0 GB
L40S 48 GB11231all 256K44.0 GB
A100 80 GB20757all 256K78.2 GB
H100 80 GB17749all 256K78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB21660all 256K93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified24969all 256K107 GB
H200 141 GB32590all 256K138 GB
B200 180 GB419104all 256K176 GB
Memory needed at each load
Requests at once8K tokens each32K tokens each
13.3 GB4.2 GB
54.7 GB9.5 GB
85.8 GB13.5 GB
168.7 GB24.0 GB
3214.5 GB45.1 GB
6426.2 GB87.4 GB

One card, with vLLM's small-card settings.

Builds

Sizes, precisions & builds

BuildParamsPrecisionWeightsSmallest setup
LFM3-1.7B-GGUF ↗
7 builds: Q4_0 1.0 GB … F16 3.5 GB
GGUF 1.1 GBRTX 3060 12 GB
LFM3-1.7B ↗ 1.7BBF16 3.5 GBRTX 3060 12 GB
LFM3-1.7B-NVFP4 ↗ 1.2BNVFP4 1.8 GBRTX 3060 12 GB
LFM3-1.7B-MLX-4bit (above) ↗ 1.7BMLX 973 MBRTX 3060 12 GB

From the model card

What LiquidAI says about LFM3

Read the model card

src="https://huggingface.co/LiquidAI/LFM3-1.7B/resolve/main/assets/liquid-ai-banner.webp" alt="Liquid AI" style="width: 100%; max-width: 100%; height: auto; display: block; margin: 0;" />

LFM3-1.7B-GGUF

GGUF version of LFM3-1.7B for local inference on CPUs and GPUs.

Find architecture and usage details in the original model card.

How to run LFM3-1.7B

Recommended sampling: temperature 0.1, top_k 50, repeat penalty 1.1. For math and science: temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, top_k 20.

  • Llama.app (Use this model > Llama in the menu), for macOS and Windows. Requires llama.cpp version v0.8.0 or newer.
  • LM Studio (Use this model > LM Studio in the menu), for macOS, Windows and Linux. Requires LM Studio with llama.cpp engine 2.65.1 or newer.
  • Ollama (ollama run lfm3), for macOS. Requires Ollama version v0.40.12 or newer.

Use with llama.cpp

[!NOTE] Supported in llama.cpp b11960 (v0.8.0) and newer.

Add a quantization tag to pick a file.

llama-cli -hf LiquidAI/LFM3-1.7B-GGUF:Q4_K_M \
  --temp 0.1 --top-k 50 --repeat-penalty 1.1

For math and science, use --temp 1.0 --top-p 0.95 --top-k 20 instead. More options in the llama.cpp guide.

QAD Q4_0 GGUF

The Q4_0 build in this repository is the Quantization-Aware Distillation (QAD) checkpoint, LFM3-1.7B-QAD-Q4_0.gguf. It was trained to recover the accuracy lost to Q4_0 quantization.

Example usage with llama.cpp:

llama-cli -hf LiquidAI/LFM3-1.7B-GGUF \
  --hf-file LFM3-1.7B-QAD-Q4_0.gguf \
  --temp 0.1 --top-k 50 --repeat-penalty 1.1

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

How it works

How language models work

Your prompttext / messagesTransformerattention over tokensNext-token loopgenerate + streamResponsetext · tool callsA language model reads your tokens and predicts the next one, again and again, streaming the reply back.
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