SAVRN Model Hub · Comparisons
gpt2 vs SmolLM2-135M-Instruct
Gpt2 has 137M parameters and SmolLM2-135M-Instruct has 135M parameters; gpt2 is released under MIT License and SmolLM2-135M-Instruct under Apache License 2.0; at 16-bit, gpt2 needs about 0.3 GB (1x MI300X from $1.85 an hour) and SmolLM2-135M-Instruct about 0.3 GB (1x MI300X from $1.85 an hour).
| Field | gpt2 openai-community/gpt2 | SmolLM2-135M-Instruct HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM2-135M-Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | OpenAI community | Hugging Face Smol Models Research |
| Task | Text generation | Text generation |
| Modality | Text | Text |
| Parameters, as reported | 137M parameters | 135M parameters |
| Architecture | GPT2LMHeadModel | LlamaForCausalLM |
| Library | transformers | transformers |
| Context length | Not stated | 8,192 tokens |
| Repository size | 5.6 GB | 2.0 GB |
| Artifact formats | safetensors, onnx, pytorch, tflite, jax, rust, tf | safetensors, onnx, tensorboard |
| License | mit | apache-2.0 |
| Access | Open weights, no gate | Open weights, no gate |
| Memory at 16-bit (weights and margin) | 0.3 GB | 0.3 GB |
| Cheapest GPUs at 16-bit, per hour | 1x MI300X, $1.85 | 1x MI300X, $1.85 |
| Memory at 4-bit (weights and margin) | 0.1 GB | 0.1 GB |
| Cheapest GPUs at 4-bit, per hour | 1x MI300X, $1.85 | 1x MI300X, $1.85 |
| Revision viewed | 607a30d783df | 12fd25f77366 |
| Downloads reported by the hub | 15.4M | 1.5M |
| Last observed | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
An evaluation row appears only where at least two of these models report the same benchmark with the same stated configuration, metric, unit and setup. Different evaluators stay named in each cell. Values are shown as reported: no unit conversion, no ranking.
SAVRN's Notes on gpt2
Seven formats ship in this repository: safetensors, ONNX, PyTorch, TFLite, JAX, Rust and TensorFlow. That is why 26 files add up to 5,632,417,295 bytes for a 137M-parameter text generator, and why a mirror should hold only the format your serving stack loads. It was pretrained with a causal language modeling objective on raw English text, no human labeling. At 16-bit, weights and working memory are each 0.3 GB; on the cheapest setup we list, an MI300X with 192 GB at $1.85 per hour, the model is a rounding error and you size the card for whatever runs beside it.
MIT asks one thing in return for commercial use, modification and redistribution: the copyright and permission notices travel with every copy. Before committing, confirm the context window, which the listing does not state, and know that it records no reported evaluations and no per-token host price on the SAVRN Index.
SAVRN's Notes on SmolLM2-135M-Instruct
We keep a slot in every facility for very small text models, and SmolLM2-135M-Instruct from Hugging Face Smol Models Research is the kind that fills it. At 135 million parameters and 0.3 GB of memory at 16-bit, it fits on any device, and the cheapest Index host, one MI300X with 192 GB at $1.85 an hour on-demand, would hold hundreds of instances. Its work is on-device text generation: short instructions, classification, routing, the traffic you do not send to a large model. Context is 8,192 tokens, enough for a page, not a contract.
Apache 2.0 allows commercial use, and our record shows it derived from and quantized from the SmolLM2-135M base, described in arXiv:2502.02737. Before deploying, confirm the base model's terms travel with it, match the September 22, 2025 update to the version you pulled, and note the onnx export for CPU serving.
Questions
Which is larger, gpt2 or SmolLM2-135M-Instruct?
gpt2 (137M parameters) is larger than SmolLM2-135M-Instruct (135M parameters), by the parameter counts their publishers report.
Which is cheaper to run, gpt2 or SmolLM2-135M-Instruct?
At 4-bit, gpt2 fits on 1x MI300X from $1.85 an hour and SmolLM2-135M-Instruct on 1x MI300X from $1.85 an hour, at the lowest on-demand prices the SAVRN Index lists.
Can I use gpt2 commercially?
Yes. gpt2 is released under MIT License. The MIT License is a short permissive license. It permits commercial use, modification and redistribution, provided the copyright notice and permission notice are included.
Can I use SmolLM2-135M-Instruct commercially?
Yes. SmolLM2-135M-Instruct is released under Apache License 2.0. The Apache License 2.0 is a permissive open-source license. It permits commercial use, modification and redistribution. It requires keeping the license and copyright notices and any NOTICE file, stating significant changes, and it includes an express patent grant from contributors.