Gemma 4 26B A4B vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Gemma 4 26B A4B leads Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 16.7 to 7.9, at about the same output price ($0.60 vs $0.70 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 6 benchmarks have a result for both.
Gemma 4 26B A4B or Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct: which to pick
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B for output tokens 1.2x cheaper ($0.60 vs $0.70 per million).
- Shared results
- 6
- Gemma 4 26B A4B only
- 49
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct only
- 4
- Like-for-like categories
- 5 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Neither has a coding score yet.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Gemma 4 26B A4B
Gemma 4 26B A4B leads, 16.7 against 7.9.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Gemma 4 26B A4B has a AA Agentic Index result, 2.9.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
No call
Both take 262K tokens.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Gemma 4 26B A4B
Gemma 4 26B A4B $0.0004, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct $0.0006 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Gemma 4 26B A4B not benchmarked, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- General, 27.3 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- IFBench: Gemma 4 26B A4B 72.4% against Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct 45.1%, 27.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Gemma 4 26B A4B $0.60 against Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct $0.70 per million output tokens, 1.2x apart.
- Context window
- Both take 262K tokens.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Bars | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 1 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| General | 1 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 6 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index10
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1360 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| AA Coding Index | 39.3 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 69.7% | Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct measured |
| SciCode | 40.0% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 25.0% | 6.1% | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| WeirdML | 35.2% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| ALE-Bench | 927.2 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1446 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1454 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1351 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1362 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 32 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 16.7 | 7.9 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.9 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 2.9 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 43.6% | 19.9% | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| Neither model has a result on the other 40 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 79.2% | 72.0% | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 19.3% | 8.9% | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 73.2% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1438 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1447 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1448 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1264 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1293 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index5 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Math Index | Not measured | 82.3 | Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 82.3% | Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 82.2% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1470 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1475 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 80.7% | Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1446 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1428 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1457 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1429 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| FACTS Benchmark Suite | 42.7% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 14 boards here | |||
Web designNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 9 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| IFBench | 72.4% | 45.1% | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 65.7% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| DTBench | 74.9% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMCA | 29.7% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text | 1434 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1420 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1400 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1260 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1444 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1421 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1495 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1460 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1415 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1434 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1441 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1427 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1405 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1403 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1256 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1312 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1268 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1272 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | 1297 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1191 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1256 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 23 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Gemma 4 26B A4B costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Gemma 4 26B A4B costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Gemma 4 26B A4B costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Google Gemma 4 26B A4B | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Qwen | |
| Weights | Open weights | Open weights |
| Released | April 3, 2026 | October 6, 2025 |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.15 | $0.20 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.60 | $0.70 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 1 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Gemma 4 26B A4B better than Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B for output tokens 1.2x cheaper ($0.60 vs $0.70 per million).
Which is cheaper, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?
Gemma 4 26B A4B costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs $0.20 and $0.70. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?
Neither: both take 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks is the Gemma 4 26B A4B vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct comparison based on?
6 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Gemma 4 26B A4B's coding index rests on 1 independent benchmark and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.