Google: Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) vs Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-07.
| Google: Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | qwen | |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 48.4 | 31.3 |
| Input Price | Free | $0.17/M |
| Output Price | Free | $0.25/M |
| Context Window | 262,144 | 262,144 |
| Max Output | 32,768 | 235,929 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 42.4 | 35.4 |
| ai_index_agentic | 18.1 | 12.2 |
| ai_index_coding | 64.9 | 47.3 |
| 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 Qwen3.5-9B costs $0.23, so Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) is free for the same work.
Both read up to 262,144 tokens at once, roughly 393 pages of text.
On our blended benchmark score Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) leads 48.4 to 31.3.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) scores higher on 20 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Completion and others).
Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) was released in April 2026 and Qwen3.5-9B in March 2026.
Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) if you need lower cost, benchmark performance 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: Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 153 | 145 |
| Code Review | 150 | 139 |
| Code Completion | 131 | 129 |
| Code Refactoring | 148 | 138 |
| Bug Fixing | 156 | 145 |
| Unit Test Generation | 140 | 133 |
| Code Documentation | 136 | 130 |
| Regex Writing | 130 | 126 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 133 | 126 |
| Frontend Component Design | 136 | 131 |
| Data Analysis | 148 | 140 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 143 | 137 |
| ETL Scripting | 141 | 132 |
| JSON Extraction | 142 | 139 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 133 | 132 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 138 | 135 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 138 | 135 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 147 | 138 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 129 | 127 |
| Blog Post Writing | 132 | 126 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →