SmolLM3 Base on IFEval: score, rank and what it means
SmolLM3 Base scores 71.3 on IFEval, placing it #437 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 distribution
The chart shows the top 10 models on IFEval, with SmolLM3 Base highlighted. Longer bars mean higher scores.
Top 10 leaderboard
| # | Model | Provider | Context | Input / 1M | Avg 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 Base sits at #437 of 600. The leader, Claude Opus 4.5 Pro, scores 96.1, so the gap to the top is 24.8 points. The median model in this index scores 81.2, which puts SmolLM3 Base below the midpoint.
Hugging Face models average 64.6 on this benchmark. SmolLM3 Base is 6.7 points above that provider line, so it is a stronger result than the average Hugging Face model.
Among open-weight models, the average is 77.0. SmolLM3 Base is 5.7 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 71.3 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 $1.38 per million input tokens, SmolLM3 Base 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.
| Model | Provider | Context | Input / 1M | Avg score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zephyr Instruct | Hugging Face | 4096 | $1.66 | 62.4 |
| DeepSeek-R1 7B | DeepSeek | 32768 | $1.79 | 63.0 |
| GLM-4.6 8B | Zhipu AI | 8192 | $1.69 | 63.1 |
| QwQ 8B | Alibaba Cloud | 16384 | $1.37 | 59.5 |
| SmolLM3 Base | Hugging Face | 16384 | $1.38 | 60.4 |
| ERNIE 4.0 Nano | Baidu | 32768 | $4.68 | 62.1 |
| GPT-NeoX Instruct | EleutherAI | 16384 | $1.52 | 62.6 |
Other benchmarks for SmolLM3 Base
| Benchmark | Score | Rank | Percentile | Relative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 63.7 | 480 | 20th | |
| GPQA Diamond | 55.0 | 464 | 23th | |
| SWE-bench Verified | 45.5 | 461 | 23th | |
| HumanEval | 63.2 | 457 | 24th | |
| MATH-500 | 60.1 | 463 | 23th | |
| AIME 2025 | 54.8 | 416 | 31th | |
| LiveCodeBench | 52.5 | 420 | 30th | |
| TruthfulQA | 65.7 | 450 | 25th | |
| HellaSwag | 73.6 | 464 | 23th | |
| MMMU | 59.4 | 435 | 28th | |
| Arena Elo | 1280.0 | 446 | 26th |
FAQ
What score does SmolLM3 Base get on IFEval?
SmolLM3 Base scores 71.3 on IFEval in this index. The benchmark average is 78.6 and the top score is 96.1.
How does SmolLM3 Base rank on IFEval?
It ranks #437 of 600 models, in the 27th percentile. The leader is Claude Opus 4.5 Pro at 96.1.
Is SmolLM3 Base 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 Base cost?
SmolLM3 Base costs $1.38 per million input tokens and $7.55 per million output tokens.