LiquidAI: LFM2.5-2.6B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

A side-by-side comparison of LiquidAI: LFM2.5-2.6B ($1.22 / 1M tokens) and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct ($1.26 / 1M tokens) using current USD prices and capabilities from the api14 catalog. Both run through the same OpenAI-compatible API.

Specifications

	LiquidAI: LFM2.5-2.6B	Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
Provider	LiquidAI	Qwen
Input	$1.22 / 1M tokens	$1.26 / 1M tokens
Output	$1.75 / 1M tokens	$1.40 / 1M tokens
Cache read	$0.14 / 1M tokens	-
Context window	128,000	32,768
Max output	8,192	16,384
Input	text	text
Output	text	text
Tool calling
Structured output
Reasoning control
Added	Aug 11, 2026	Sep 19, 2024

Key differences

Both have about the same input price.
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is 20% cheaper on output tokens.
LiquidAI: LFM2.5-2.6B reads 3.9× more context (128,000 tokens).
Only LiquidAI: LFM2.5-2.6B supports reasoning effort control.
A request with 1,000 input and 500 output tokens costs $0.00210 with LiquidAI: LFM2.5-2.6B and $0.00196 with Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.

Switch with one string

Both models use the same endpoint and request shape. Change the model value from "liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b" to "qwen/qwen-2.5-72b-instruct" and prompts, streaming and tools keep working.

LiquidAI: LFM2.5-2.6B details & playground →Qwen2.5 72B Instruct details & playground →

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: "https://api14.com/api/v1",
  apiKey: process.env.API14_API_KEY,
});

const result = await client.chat.completions.create({
  "model": "qwen/qwen-2.5-72b-instruct",
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "Explain vector databases in two sentences."
    }
  ]
});
console.log(result.choices[0].message.content);

LiquidAI: LFM2.5-2.6B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

Specifications

Key differences

Switch with one string

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