Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Arete-27B vs DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT
Arete-27B scores 55.1 (C) on agent readiness against DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT's 51.3 (D), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT leads on reach, risk and agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 4969 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Agents that want Qwen3.8-27B's coding and tool use without its handling of politically sensitive topics, on a 24 GB card or a 128 GB machine
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No quantised build from Nous Research, so the GGUF route depends on a third party
Best for Agents with about 64 GB of GPU memory that want fast single-user generation from text and images and can accept lower quality than Gemma 4
Ahead on
- Reach, 55 against 50
- Risk, 70 against 55
- Agent interface, 70 against 60
Watch for
No quantised build from Google, so the smallest official build needs the 64 GB band
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Risk DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +15
Arete-27B 55
File safety 25, safetensors only and no remote code. Provenance 15, Nous Research's own organisation, linked from its blog, with a hash on every file. Safety evaluation 0 and agent guidance 0, nothing published on either. Licence risk 15, plain Apache 2.0. Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw found. 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 55.
DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT 70
File safety gets the full 25, safetensors only and loaded by Transformers' own code and a Jinja template. Provenance gets 15 for files in Google's organisation with a hash for every file. Licence risk keeps 15 under plain Apache 2.0. Agent guidance gets 10 for the card's list of harm categories and its advice to add content-safety safeguards. Safety evaluation scores 0 because the card states improvements without figures. The security programme gets 5 for Google's security.txt, with no public advisories for Gemma.
Agent interface DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +10
Arete-27B 60
Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says it. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic work as an intended use. Structured output 0 and reasoning control 0, neither is documented on the card. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native. 20 + 10 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 60.
DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT 70
The chat template is in the repository (20) and handles several tool calls in one turn, and the card names function calling as trained (20). The tool-calling format gets 10, since only the template and the shipped response schema say how tools work here and Google's tool-calling guide is for Gemma 4. Structured output scores 0, undocumented and rejected by SGLang. Thinking can be turned on or off per request with the reasoning in its own channel (10), and the context is 256K (10).
Reach DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +5
Arete-27B 50
Memory 10, the only build from Nous Research is the 54.7 GB BF16 release, which needs about 66 GB and fits the reference machine. Runtimes 15, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers run the base's architecture from those files, and llama.cpp isn't credited because Nous Research publishes no GGUF. Builds 0, no quantised build of its own. Terms 15, Apache 2.0. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, no provider. 10 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 50.
DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT 55
Memory earns 15 because the only Google build is 51.7 GB of BF16, about 62 GB with the fifth added, which needs the 64 GB band. Runtimes get 15 for Transformers from 5.11.0, SGLang from v0.5.22 and vLLM, whose releases from v0.24.0 (tag commit 28 June 2026) to v0.33.0 register DiffusionGemmaForBlockDiffusion; llama.cpp (b12114, and Ollama through its pin b11963) and LM Studio don't run it. Builds score 0 because Google publishes no quantised build, though others have published FP8, NVFP4, GGUF and 4-bit copies. Apache 2.0 with nothing added gives terms the full 15 and the ungated repository gives download the full 10. Hosted too scores 0, since no inference provider is mapped and the Gemini API doesn't serve it.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Arete-27B | DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 50 | 55 | DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +5 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 70 | DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +15 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 60 | 70 | DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +10 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 63 | 60 | Arete-27B +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 55.1/100 | D 51.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Arete-27B | DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Nous Research | Google DeepMind |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-07-15 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Arete-27B
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Arete-27B
Qwen3.8-27B with its answers on politically sensitive topics retrained, four days old when read. The training data is published, which is rare. Nous Research ships BF16 only, so a small machine runs it from bartowski's GGUF, and the card documents none of the tool or thinking controls it inherits.
DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT
A text diffusion model for fast low-concurrency local generation from text, images and video, with optional thinking and Gemma 4's tool format, under Apache 2.0. Google's BF16 files need about 62 GB, and it runs in Transformers, SGLang and vLLM. Google's own figures put it below Gemma 4 26B A4B, and Google labels it experimental.
Before you call either
Arete-27B
- Start it with
llama-server -hf bartowski/NousResearch_Arete-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja, a third party's conversion, or serve the BF16 files with vLLM - Use the base's parsers in vLLM,
--reasoning-parser qwen3 --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, and check tool calls first, since the template differs slightly from Qwen3.8-27B's - Thinking switches with
enable_thinkingin the template. The card's own evaluation ran with it off - Expect answers on politically sensitive topics to differ from Qwen3.8-27B's. That is what the fine-tune is for
- Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT
- Serve it with
sglang serve --model-path google/diffusiongemma-26B-A4B-it --dllm-algorithm Gemma4Renoise --trust-remote-codeon SGLang v0.5.22 or later, then call /v1/chat/completions - In Transformers, install
transformers>=5.11.0and loadDiffusionGemmaForBlockDiffusionwithdtype="auto"; generation_config.json already holds the recommended sampler - Turn thinking on with
enable_thinking=Truein apply_chat_template or<|think|>at the start of the system prompt, read the reasoning between<|channel>thoughtand<channel|>, and drop it from history before the next turn - Don't rely on temperature, top_p, logit_bias or JSON Schema in SGLang, which ignores or rejects them for this model; validate JSON yourself
- Streaming arrives one 256-token canvas at a time, not token by token
- Put images before text in the prompt, and pick an image token budget of 70 to 1,120 by how much detail the task needs
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Arete-27B or DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT?
Arete-27B scores 55.1 (C) on agent readiness against DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT's 51.3 (D), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT leads on reach, risk and agent interface.
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compare_tools {"a": "arete-27b", "b": "diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it"}at/mcp, no key