Soofi S
Shares rank 66 of 72 language models by recommenders
Recommended as an open source German model, competitive in its small-model class. Critics say it trains on benchmark test data and skips current top models.
Recommended as an open source German model, competitive in its small-model class. Critics say it trains on benchmark test data and skips current top models.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 40%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fully open source German model
“It actually looks like an open source German model that might be useful!”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Soofi – Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models” “Apertus and Soofi, both open source (not only open weight) models”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Startup founders urge Trump not to shut off Chinese open weight AI” Competitive on benchmarks in its class
“Soofi S and Apertus 1.5 outperform or are at least comparable to Ai2 depending on benchmarks.”
Comment from 8 Aug 2026 in “U.S. Department of Energy Launches the Genesis Open Models Initiative” “it's a small win in the small model class”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Soofi – Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Omits current best comparable models
“it's a shame when the benchmarks don't include the current best comparable models”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “German AI consortium releases Soofi S, an open 30B model that tops benchmarks” “Nice trick to be not comparable with most other LLMs on the market”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “German AI consortium releases Soofi S, an open 30B model that tops benchmarks” “I bet it's doing really well against Llama 3 :)”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “German AI consortium releases Soofi S, an open 30B model that tops benchmarks” Trained on benchmark test data
“they trained on 10 epochs of a "very light rephrasing" of EVERY gpqa diamond EVAL data”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “German AI consortium releases Soofi S, an open 30B model” “More like Nemotron 3 with benchmaxxing enabled has (re-)entered the chat.”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “German AI consortium releases Soofi S, an open 30B model that tops benchmarks” “It's just nemotron with benchmark juicing and the sovereign smokescreen”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Soofi – Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models” - Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “German AI consortium releases Soofi S, an open 30B model that tops benchmarks”
Seen as late and disappointing
“this atm just feels like too little too late to be taken seriously”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “German AI consortium releases Soofi S, an open 30B model that tops benchmarks” “Disappointing. Sounds like Volkswagen 2.0”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “German AI consortium releases Soofi S, an open 30B model that tops benchmarks”
Other language models people recommend
The four most recommended other language models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus | 3,331 | 2,746 | 55% | 13 | 4 mo156 owners | — |
| OpenAI GPT | 1,205 | 987 | 55% | 13 | 6 mo47 owners | — |
| Claude Sonnet | 854 | 586 | 59% | 13 | 6 mo46 owners | — |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 828 | 223 | 79% | 8 | 1 mo24 owners | Approved |
| Soofi SThis page | 6 | 9 | 40% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Soofi S and Apertus 1.5 outperform or are at least comparable to Ai2 depending on benchmarks.”
“Apertus and Soofi, both open source (not only open weight) models”
“it presents a pop-up in German, which I can't read, so I can't change it to be in English”
“It's just nemotron with benchmark juicing and the sovereign smokescreen”
“it's a small win in the small model class”
“I'm not seeing how this project is open source exactly.”
“this atm just feels like too little too late to be taken seriously”
“I bet it's doing really well against Llama 3 :)”
“Disappointing. Sounds like Volkswagen 2.0”
“More like Nemotron 3 with benchmaxxing enabled has (re-)entered the chat.”
“It tops benchmarks because it uses them in its training data.”
“it's a shame when the benchmarks don't include the current best comparable models”
“Nice trick to be not comparable with most other LLMs on the market”
“they trained on 10 epochs of a "very light rephrasing" of EVERY gpqa diamond EVAL data”
“It actually looks like an open source German model that might be useful!”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.