Instruction following · Hugging Face

SmolLM3 8B on IFEval: score, rank and what it means

SmolLM3 8B scores 56.3 on IFEval, placing it #589 of 600 models in the index. The benchmark average is 78.6 and the leader is Claude Opus 4.5 Pro at 96.1.

Score
56.3
0–100 scale
Rank
#589
of 600
Percentile
2th
within the index
Benchmark avg
78.6
all models
Leader
96.1
Claude Opus 4.5 Pro
Gap to leader
39.8
points

Score distribution

The chart shows the top 10 models on IFEval, with SmolLM3 8B highlighted. Longer bars mean higher scores.

Claude Opus 4.5 Pro 96.1
Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning 95.9
GPT-5.2 Pro 95.6
GPT-5.2 Max 95.2
GPT-5.2 Reasoning 95.0
GPT-5.1 Pro 94.8
Gemini 3 Pro Max 94.7
GPT-5.1 Reasoning 94.6
Claude Opus 4.5 Max 94.5
o4 Reasoning 94.5

Top 10 leaderboard

#ModelProviderContextInput / 1MAvg score
1 Claude Opus 4.5 Pro Anthropic 200000 $20.98 89.1
2 Claude Opus 4.5 Reasoning Anthropic 2000000 $20.91 88.2
3 GPT-5.2 Pro OpenAI 2000000 $21.32 89.6
4 GPT-5.2 Max OpenAI 1000000 $21.39 89.2
5 GPT-5.2 Reasoning OpenAI 1000000 $20.98 87.5
6 GPT-5.1 Pro OpenAI 200000 $19.77 87.8
7 Gemini 3 Pro Max Google DeepMind 2000000 $20.57 87.9
8 GPT-5.1 Reasoning OpenAI 400000 $20.27 88.3
9 Claude Opus 4.5 Max Anthropic 1000000 $20.90 87.8
10 o4 Reasoning OpenAI 1000000 $19.69 87.5

What this score means

On IFEval, SmolLM3 8B sits at #589 of 600. The leader, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro, scores 96.1, so the gap to the top is 39.8 points. The median model in this index scores 81.2, which puts SmolLM3 8B below the midpoint.

Hugging Face models average 64.6 on this benchmark. SmolLM3 8B is 8.3 points below that provider line, so it is a weaker result than the average Hugging Face model.

Among small open-weight models, the average is 64.9. SmolLM3 8B is 8.6 points below that group. This is the more useful comparison if you are shortlisting within the same tier rather than across the whole index.

Read a 56.3 as a relative signal, not an absolute guarantee. Benchmark scores depend on prompt format, evaluation harness and contamination controls. Use this page to narrow the shortlist, then test the model on your own data.

Price context

At $0.21 per million input tokens, SmolLM3 8B is below the median input price of $4.00 across the 600 models scored on IFEval. The models immediately around it in the ranking are shown below so you can compare score and price together.

ModelProviderContextInput / 1MAvg score
StableLM 2 7B Stability AI 8192 $0.28 44.3
Zephyr 7B Hugging Face 32768 $0.23 42.5
GPT-NeoX 7B EleutherAI 8192 $0.20 42.4
GPT-NeoX 8B EleutherAI 16384 $0.25 43.7
SmolLM3 8B Hugging Face 32768 $0.21 44.0
Zephyr 8B Hugging Face 8192 $0.22 43.0
OLMo 2 1.5B Allen Institute for AI 16384 $0.28 44.0

Other benchmarks for SmolLM3 8B

BenchmarkScoreRankPercentileRelative
MMLU-Pro 51.2 589 2th
GPQA Diamond 38.9 589 2th
SWE-bench Verified 27.8 586 2th
HumanEval 49.0 581 3th
MATH-500 44.4 580 3th
AIME 2025 26.2 591 2th
LiveCodeBench 31.3 581 3th
TruthfulQA 50.6 589 2th
HellaSwag 66.2 576 4th
MMMU 41.8 590 2th
Arena Elo 1153.0 584 3th

FAQ

What score does SmolLM3 8B get on IFEval?

SmolLM3 8B scores 56.3 on IFEval in this index. The benchmark average is 78.6 and the top score is 96.1.

How does SmolLM3 8B rank on IFEval?

It ranks #589 of 600 models, in the 2nd percentile. The leader is Claude Opus 4.5 Pro at 96.1.

Is SmolLM3 8B good at IFEval?

It is below the median for this benchmark, so test it carefully before relying on it for this capability. The result should be read alongside its price and context window.

How is the IFEval score calculated?

IFEval is a instruction following benchmark. Scores in this index are modelled estimates on a 0–100 scale (or Elo for Arena), derived from capability tier and benchmark difficulty. They are not official leaderboard results.

What does SmolLM3 8B cost?

SmolLM3 8B costs $0.21 per million input tokens and $0.76 per million output tokens.

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