Model tracker / Decision models / H2O.ai
H2O-Lightning-4B
Open-weight 4B H2O.ai decision model on Qwen3.5-4B for questions about text and images
H2O-Lightning-4B is an open-weight decision model from H2O.ai (Apache 2.0, 4B, fine-tuned from Qwen3.5-4B (v1.4.2) parameters): it answers typed questions, such as yes or no, pick one or pick several, with probabilities instead of writing text. There's no hosted version: you run it on your own hardware. It scores 77.0 (v1.4.1, which H2O.ai says gives the same text answers as v1.4.2; self-hosted; seconds are the board's estimate; unranked until the board's 27 Oct draw is equated (v1.1 is ranked at 75.0)) on the independent JevBench Capability Score (board v1.7.46), where Jev, the reference, scores 77.1.
- Made by
- H2O.ai
- Weights
- Open, Apache 2.0
- Size
- 4B, fine-tuned from Qwen3.5-4B (v1.4.2)
- Where
- Self-host only
- Images
- Yes
- Context
- 40,960 by default (longer records are cut to fit)
H2O-Lightning-4B price
US dollars per million input tokens. Decision models don't write text, so none of the hosted ones charge for output.
| Where | Input | Output | Notes | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-host only | Self-host | – | – | 2026-11-09 |
H2O-Lightning-4B benchmarks
| Benchmark | Result | What it measures | Reported by |
|---|---|---|---|
| JevBench v1.7.46 | 77.0 | Capability Score: accuracy and calibration on typed decisions, with Jev as the reference system | Independent |
| JevBench time | 0.19 s | Seconds per decision: measured end to end for hosted APIs, the board's estimate for self-hosted models | Independent |
| Reported speed | 25 ms median one request at a time on Decision Index text rows, on an RTX PRO 6000 | Latency on the maker's own hardware | H2O.ai |
Makers' speeds are measured on their own hardware and aren't comparable with each other or with JevBench's timings.
Decision models like H2O-Lightning-4B
Every other decision model we track, by independent JevBench score.
| Model | Input / M | JevBench | Weights |
|---|---|---|---|
| H2O-Lightning-4B | Self-host | 77.0 | Open |
| Torchcast Decision 31B Torchcast AI | Self-host | 91.8 | Open |
| Piccolo-27B AgentScope | Self-host | 86.0 | Open |
| Mammoth-1 Baseten (Base Labs) | $0.10 | 85.2 | Open |
| H2O-Lightning-31B H2O.ai | Self-host | 84.3 | Open |
| Drex Max v1.1 Nace.AI | $0.03 | 84.2 | Closed |
| Perplexity Decider V1.2 Perplexity | $0.02 | 80.8 | Open |
| d1-ultra Liquid AI | $0.042 | 80.5 | Closed |
| Kev-27B Jared Palmer | Self-host | 78.9 | Open |
| Piccolo-9B AgentScope | Self-host | 76.6 | Open |
| Clef Cloudflare | $0.24 | 75.3 | Open |
| Jev 1.14 TypeSafe AI | $0.042 | 75.0 | Closed |
| d1 Liquid AI | $0.02 | 74.4 | Closed |
| iota-decide-4b Macrocosmos | Self-host | 74.0 | Open |
| Mercury Decide Inception | $0.02 | 73.6 | Closed |
| Piccolo-4B AgentScope | Self-host | 73.6 | Open |
| OpenAI Decisions (GPT-6 Luna) OpenAI | $0.10 | 73.5 | Closed |
| Microsoft-Decision-1 Microsoft | $0.042 | 70.8 | Closed |
| Elephant-1 Baseten (Base Labs) | $0.035 | 70.2 | Open |
| Strands Decider 26B-A4B AWS Strands Labs | Self-host | 66.7 | Open |
| Clef-flash Cloudflare | $0.038 | 63.8 | Open |
| Perplexity Decider Flash V1.2 Perplexity | $0.01 | 61.7 | Open |
| Kev-9B Jared Palmer | Self-host | 61.5 | Open |
| Clef-omni Cloudflare | $0.15 | 58.3 | Open |
| Joey-1 Baseten (Base Labs) | $0.01 | 57.8 | Open |
| d1-3B Liquid AI | Self-host | 49.5 | Open |
| d1-omni-600M (experimental) Liquid AI | Self-host | 32.8 | Open |
| Laya Convai Innovations | $0.011 | 32.5 | Open |
| CLM-8B Stanford and NVIDIA | Self-host | 20.1 | Open |
| Clairic Cloudflare | $0.10 | – | Closed |
| d1.1 Liquid AI | $0.02 | – | Closed |
| d1-2B Liquid AI | Self-host | – | Open |
| d1-omni-2B Liquid AI | Self-host | – | Open |
| Drex 1.5 Nace.AI | $0.04 | – | Open |
| Drex 2.0 Nace.AI | $0.03 | – | Open |
| Kev-0.8B Jared Palmer | Self-host | – | Open |
| Kev-4B Jared Palmer | $0.042 | – | Open |
| Koa Decisions Salesforce | Self-host | – | Closed |
| Strands Decider 12B AWS Strands Labs | Self-host | – | Open |
| Strands Decider 2B AWS Strands Labs | Self-host | – | Open |
| Strands Decider E2B AWS Strands Labs | Self-host | – | Open |
| Strands Decider E4B AWS Strands Labs | Self-host | – | Open |
Compare them all in the decision models table →
H2O-Lightning-4B on dbggr
- Microsoft enters decision models at Jev's price as TypeSafe raises $870M Daily, 2026-10-09
H2O-Lightning-4B FAQ
How much does H2O-Lightning-4B cost?
H2O-Lightning-4B has no hosted, per-token price: you download it and run it yourself, so the cost is your own compute.
Is H2O-Lightning-4B open weight?
Yes. H2O.ai publishes the weights under Apache 2.0, so you can run and fine-tune it yourself.
How fast is H2O-Lightning-4B?
H2O.ai reports 25 ms median one request at a time on Decision Index text rows, on an RTX PRO 6000, measured on its own hardware. JevBench gives 0.19 seconds per decision, its estimate for self-hosting.
How does H2O-Lightning-4B compare with Jev?
On JevBench's Capability Score (board v1.7.46), H2O-Lightning-4B scores 77.0 against Jev's 77.1. Jev costs $0.042 per million input tokens; H2O-Lightning-4B is self-host only. JevBench is a one-person project that uses Jev as its reference, which favours cheap hosted models.