A Short Survey on Small Reasoning Models: Training, Inference, Applications and Research Directions

Chengyu Wang, Taolin Zhang, Richang Hong, Jun Huang
4/12/2025
cs.AIcs.CL

No confident code implementation found for this paper. 3 possible matches can be shown below.

Abstract

Recently, the reasoning capabilities of large reasoning models (LRMs), such as DeepSeek-R1, have seen significant advancements through the slow thinking process. Despite these achievements, the substantial computational demands of LRMs present considerable challenges. In contrast, small reasoning models (SRMs), often distilled from larger ones, offer greater efficiency and can exhibit distinct capabilities and cognitive trajectories compared to LRMs. This work surveys around 170 recently published papers on SRMs for tackling various complex reasoning tasks. We review the current landscape of SRMs and analyze diverse training and inference techniques related to SRMs. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive review of SRMs for domain-specific applications and discuss possible future research directions. This survey serves as an essential reference for researchers to leverage or develop SRMs for advanced reasoning functionalities with high efficiency.

View on arXivView PDF

Code Implementations

No confident code match yet

We couldn't find an author-owned or strongly-evidenced community implementation for this paper. 3 weaker matches are hidden by default — verify before relying on them.

No code implementations found yet.

Know of an implementation? Let us know in the comments below!

Similar Papers

Cite this paper

@article{wang2025short,
  title  = {A Short Survey on Small Reasoning Models: Training, Inference, Applications and Research Directions},
  author = {Chengyu Wang and Taolin Zhang and Richang Hong and Jun Huang},
  year   = {2025},
  eprint = {2504.09100},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url    = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2504.09100v1}
}

Add a badge to your README

Shows whether official code is linked for this paper.

Code of Paper badge
[![Code of Paper](https://codeofpaper.com/badge/2504.09100.svg)](https://codeofpaper.com/paper/2504.09100)

Discussion