Google: Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Google: Gemma 4 26B A4B (free)
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-07.
| Google: Gemini 3.6 Flash | Google: Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | ||
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | - | 48.4 |
| Input Price | $0.75/M | Free |
| Output Price | $3.75/M | Free |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 262,144 |
| Max Output | 65,536 | 32,768 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | ✓ | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | - | 42.4 |
| ai_index_agentic | - | 18.1 |
| ai_index_coding | - | 64.9 |
| eqbench | - | 56.3 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) costs $0 and Gemini 3.6 Flash costs $1.69, so Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) is free for the same work.
Gemini 3.6 Flash reads up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text, against about 393 pages for Gemma 4 26B A4B (free).
Only Gemini 3.6 Flash offers audio input.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) on 20 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Completion and others).
Gemini 3.6 Flash was released in July 2026 and Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) in April 2026.
Pick Gemini 3.6 Flash if you need long documents or audio input; pick Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) if you need lower cost or the stronger all-round task scores.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Google: Gemini 3.6 Flash | Google: Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 133 | 153 |
| Code Review | 132 | 150 |
| Code Completion | 131 | 131 |
| Code Refactoring | 136 | 148 |
| Bug Fixing | 136 | 156 |
| Unit Test Generation | 124 | 140 |
| Code Documentation | 131 | 136 |
| Regex Writing | 119 | 130 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 120 | 133 |
| Frontend Component Design | 122 | 136 |
| Data Analysis | 124 | 148 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 133 | 143 |
| ETL Scripting | 128 | 141 |
| JSON Extraction | 131 | 142 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 128 | 133 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 131 | 138 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 131 | 138 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 137 | 147 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 123 | 129 |
| Blog Post Writing | 121 | 132 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →