Small Language Models

Also known as SLM

Researchers build small language models by training compact models from scratch, distilling larger teachers, or adapting open models with supervised fine-tuning, LoRA/QLoRA, preference optimization, and quantization. To extend their capabilities, systems combine them with retrieval, tools, structured reasoning, verification, or selective handoff to larger models, particularly for edge, private, and latency-sensitive use. Evaluations span reasoning and coding benchmarks such as GSM8K and SWE-bench, structured tasks such as Spider and BIRD text-to-SQL, and domains including medicine, law, and low-resource languages. Specialized small models can be efficient and competitive, but results depend on the task: grounding retrieved context, reliable multi-step reasoning, safety, and generalization remain challenges, alongside trade-offs among accuracy, latency, memory, energy, and cost.

Latest papers

277 papers42 papers in the last four weeks, up 100% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

Little Brains, Big Feats: Exploring Compact Language Models
Jun 29, 2026Dari Baturova, Elena Bruches, Ivan Chernov +3Retrieval-Augmented Generation On-Device Language Model Inference
Siberian Neuronets LLC, Novosibirsk, Russia
Decomposing Memorization Reduction in Privacy-Preserving Fine-Tuning of SLMs for CSIRTs
Jun 26, 2026Cristhian Kapelinski, Diego KreutzPrivacy-Preserving Language Models Memorization in Language Models
Federal University of Pampa (UNIPAMPA), Alegrete, Brazil
Continual Learning for Sequential Personalization of Small Language Models: A Stability Monitoring Analysis
Jun 26, 2026Thomas S. Paula, Lucas S. Kupssinskü, Rodrigo C. BarrosLLM Personalization Small Language Models
MALTA, Machine Learning Theory and Applications Lab, PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Brazil · Kunumi Institute, Brazil
Charting the Growth of Social-Physical HRI (spHRI): A Systematic Review Pipeline Augmented by Small Language Models
Jun 24, 2026Mayumi Mohan, Ju-Hung Chen, Alexis E. BlockEvidence Selection Small Language Models
Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, USA
Closed-Loop Control with Rule-Aligned Small Language Models and Multi-Agent Self-Correction
Jun 24, 2026Yuchen Wang, Javal Vyas, Tong Liu +1Language Model-Based Control Small Language Models
School of Computer Science University of Sheffield Sheffield, UK · Department of Chemical Engineering Imperial College London London, UK
LLMs Prompted for Legal Context Object More: Overrefusal from Small On-Premises LLMs in Criminal Legal Context
Jun 23, 2026Anastasiia Kucherenko, François Brouchoud, Dimitri Percia David +1LLM Prompting Small Language Models
IEM, HEG, HES-SO Valais-Wallis Sierre, Switzerland
Sub-Billion, Super-Frontier: Small Language Models Rival Zero-Shot Frontier LLMs on General and Literary Relation Extraction
Jun 21, 2026Despina Christou, Grigorios TsoumakasRelation Extraction LLM Evaluation
School of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Greece · Archimedes, Athena Research Center, Greece
L20-Edu-135M: An Auditable Single-GPU Study of Data-Efficient Small Language Modeling
Jun 20, 2026Yin LiLanguage Model Pretraining Small Language Models
University of Birmingham
Clinical Term Extraction using Open-Source Small Language Models
Jun 19, 2026Noah Marchal, William E. Janes, Mihail Popescu +1Small Language Models Clinical Information Extraction
University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA · Department of Occupational Therapy; University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Evaluation of Small Language Models for Arabic Language Processing
Jun 19, 2026Jumana Alsubhi, Ahmed Alhusayni, Abdulrahman Gharawi +5Arabic NLP Small Language Models
Naseej Innovation Lab, Naseej for Technology, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
CAT-Translate: Building Compact Open-Source Models for Japanese-English Translation
Jun 19, 2026Yuu JinnaiLLM Fine-Tuning Small Language Models
CyberAgent / Tokyo, Japan
TerraMARS: A Domain-Adapted Small-Language-Model Pipeline for Mars Terraforming Literature
Jun 18, 2026Jyotsna Singh, Ash Black, Jeff Larsen +1Small Language Models Quantization-Aware LoRA
College of Information Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA · Biosphere 2, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA · Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA +1
Multi-Source Cybersecurity Logs: An ATT&CK-Labeled Dataset and SLM Evaluation
Jun 16, 2026Abir Ashab Niloy, Ahmed Ryan, Imamul Hossain Rafi +2Network Intrusion Detection Cybersecurity
University of Dhaka · The University of Alabama
Surpassing Scale by Efficiency: A Compact 135M Parameter Foundational LLM Natively Adapted for the Bangla Language
Jun 15, 2026Rabindra Nath NandiDecoder-Only Language Models Small Language Models
Independent Researcher
VibeThinker-3B: Exploring the Frontier of Verifiable Reasoning in Small Language Models
Jun 15, 2026Sen Xu, Shixi Liu, Wei Wang +6Small Language Models Reasoning Verification
Sina Weibo Inc.
Small LLMs: Pruning vs. Training from Scratch
Jun 12, 2026Yufeng Xu, Taiming Lu, Kunjun Li +3Language Model Pretraining LLM Pruning
Princeton University · New York University · Carnegie Mellon University
More Yap Less Meaning: Uncovering Self-Improvement Behavior in SLMs
Jun 7, 2026Marina Igitkhanian, Erik ArakelyanLLM Self-Correction Test-Time Scaling
American University of Armenia · NVIDIA
Efficient Skill Grounding via Code Refactoring with Small Language Models
Jun 6, 2026Sera Choi, Wonje Choi, Saehun Chun +4Small Language Models Cross-Embodiment Robot Learning
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea · Department of Systems Management Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea
SLMJury: Can Small Language Models Judge as Well as Large Ones?
Jun 5, 2026Anish Laddha, Nitesh Pradhan, Gaurav SrivastavaLLM-as-a-Judge Language Model Generation Evaluation
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, LNMIIT, Jaipur, India · Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
The Fine-Tuning Trap: Evaluating Negative Transfer and the Role of PEFT in Sub-1B Mathematical Reasoning
Jun 5, 2026Rahul Nair, Chun TaoFine-Tuning Small Language Models
Domain-Adapted Small Language Models with Hybrid Post-Processing: Achieving Cost-Efficient, Low-Latency Multi-Label Structured Prediction via LoRA Fine-Tuning on Scarce Data
Jun 4, 2026Srinivasan Manoharan, Dilipkumar Nallusamy, Sachin Kumar +1Multi-Label Classification Small Language Models
PayPal Inc San Jose, USA · PayPal Inc Chennai, India · PayPal Inc Bangalore, India
DuDi: Dual-Signal Distillation with Cross-Lingual Verbalizer
Jun 3, 2026Patomporn Payoungkhamdee, Tinnakit Udsa, Jian Gang Ngui +3Multilingual Language Models Small Language Models
School of Information Science and Technology, VISTEC · AI Singapore · MBZUAI
Learning What to Learn: Stage-Specific Data Sets for SFT-then-RL in Small Language Model Reasoning
Jun 3, 2026Chongyang He, Rui Zhang, Zixuan Wang +1Supervised Fine-Tuning RL for Language Model Reasoning
1Tsinghua University · 2National University of Singapore · 3DiDi +1
From Prompt to Service: An SLM-Based Agent Orchestration Gateway for AI-Driven Virtual Worlds
Jun 2, 2026Louis Nisiotis, Aimilios HadjiliasiLLM Agent Orchestration Small Language Models
Department of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics UCLan Cyprus
ProbeScale: Probing Analysis to Optimize Neural Scaling Laws for Efficient Small Language Model Inference
Jun 1, 2026Sourav DasSmall Language Models Efficient Language Model Inference
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institution of Information Technology Kalyani Kalyani, West Bengal, India
Child-directed speech facilitates production, not comprehension, in BabyLMs
May 31, 2026Bastian Bunzeck, Sina ZarrießLanguage Model Pretraining LLM Evaluation
Computational Linguistics, Department of Linguistics Bielefeld University, Germany
OCC-RAG: Optimal Cognitive Core for Faithful Question Answering
May 30, 2026Maksim Savkin, Mikhail Goncharov, Alexander Gambashidze +7Multi-Hop QA LLM Grounding
OCC Team
Short-form Text Rewriting with Phi Silica
May 30, 2026Divya Tadimeti, Shawn Pan, Sameera Lanka +2LLM Fine-Tuning Small Language Models
Microsoft · Cambridge, USA · Redmond, USA
APE: Agentic Prompt Enhancer for Image Generation and Editing
May 29, 2026Zijian Huang, Jay Zhangjie Wu, Zian Wang +5Text-Guided Image Editing T2I Generation
1NVIDIA · University of Michigan
Multilingual and Cross-Lingual Citation Needed Detection on Wikipedia for Lower-Resource Languages
May 29, 2026Gerrit Quaremba, Amy Rechkemmer, Elizabeth Black +2Multilingual Language Model Evaluation Small Language Models
King’s College London · Wikimedia Foundation

Jun 29, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

Little Brains, Big Feats: Exploring Compact Language Models

Dari Baturova, Elena Bruches, Ivan Chernov, Roman Derunets+2

Siberian Neuronets LLC, Novosibirsk, Russia

Retrieval-Augmented Generation On-Device Language Model Inference Language Model Generation Evaluation Small Language Models

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While large language models have been dominating the research landscape recently, small language models remain highly relevant across various domains; yet, they receive far less attention. In this study, we investigate how smaller language models perform during the generation stage within a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system. To benchmark these models effectively, we utilised both open-source and proprietary datasets covering diverse subject areas and question types. Our findings demonstrate that a RAG system with small language models can be executed directly on-device without requiring any GPU hardware within a reasonable time. The experimental code and links to the supplementary materials can be accessed through the GitHub repository: https://github.com/SibNN/SLM-RAG-EVAL.