Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Devstral Small 2 vs DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT

Devstral Small 2 scores 61 (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 risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Devstral Small 2 C

Best for Developers who want a dependable local coding agent on one consumer GPU or a 32 GB Mac

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 55

Watch for

No limitations, safety results, languages or data on the card

DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT D

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

  • Risk, 70 against 60
  • Agent interface, 70 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 60 against 46

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.

Reach Devstral Small 2 +35

Devstral Small 2 90

Memory 25, the smallest build at 4 bits from a runtime's own library is Ollama's devstral-small-2 at Q4_K_M, 15 GB, and 15 GB × 1.2 = 18 GB, within 24 GB. Mistral's own FP8 files are 25.79 GB. Runtimes 25, Released vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23 and Transformers 5.22.2 have the mistral3 model, llama.cpp b12242 has the architecture with a GGUF from its own organisation, and Ollama's library has devstral-small-2. Builds 10, one quantised precision from Mistral, the FP8 weights it releases. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata and text, an OSI licence with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 5, Mistral's own API serves Devstral Small 2: the card says the model is available through its API and points there when a local runtime underperforms. 25 + 25 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 90.

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.

Documentation and upkeep DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +14

Devstral Small 2 46

Model card 11, Intended use, the architecture, the parameters and the context are on the card. Training data 0, Nothing on the card about the training data. Last change 10, the last commit, on 15 July 2026, updated the files to match mistral-common, 118 days before this check and within 180. Responsiveness 10, Of the 23 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (9 December 2025 to 6 November 2026), 11 have a reply from a mistralai member, which is some. Version policy 5, Devstral Small 1.1 stays in its own repository, which this card links as the predecessor, with no dated note on the older card that we read. File health 10, Config, template, tokenizer and card agree, and the June and July commits fixed stray tokens and brought the files in line with mistral-common. 11 + 0 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 46.

DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT 60

The card covers all seven points (20), and the training data is a general description with a January 2025 cut-off (10). The files last changed on 15 July 2026, 112 days before this check (10). Google organisation members answered 10 of the 20 discussions (10). It's a first release (5). File health gets 5 because the diffusers scheduler config disagrees with the card's sampling settings, though the files on the documented path agree.

Risk DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +10

Devstral Small 2 60

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, files in Mistral's verified mistralai organisation, which Mistral's site links to per our Mistral Large 4 listing (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on prompt injection, instruction priority or what the model refuses. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, threshold or change clause. Security programme 5, mistral.ai's security.txt gives a security contact and a submission policy, as read for the Mistral Large 4 listing (5). 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 60.

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 +5

Devstral Small 2 65

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (11,362 characters), with the tokenizer's tekken file for mistral-common. Tool-calling format 25, the card documents tools in the OpenAI function format with an example, names the mistral tool-call parser with auto tool choice for vLLM, shows the same for SGLang, and ships test prompts with the expected tool-call output. Trained tool calling 10, the card says the model excels at using tools, and its tests cover one tool call and calls made one at a time in sequence. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained answers for this model. Reasoning control 0, no reasoning mode is documented, and a June 2026 commit removed stray thinking tokens from the files. Context 10, 256K tokens per the card, served at 262,144 in its vLLM command. 20 + 25 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 65.

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).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDevstral Small 2DiffusionGemma 26B A4B ITEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259055Devstral Small 2 +35
Risk20%206070DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +10
Agent interface10%106570DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +5
Documentation and upkeep10%104660DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +14
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100D 51.3/100

Facts side by side

FactDevstral Small 2DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorMistral AIGoogle DeepMind
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-07-152026-07-15
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Devstral Small 2

The easy one to run: a 24B coding agent under Apache 2.0 that five runtimes carry, 15 GB at 4 bits in Ollama, with a 256K context, image input and well-documented tool calling. It's eleven months old, calls tools one at a time, has no reasoning mode, and its card says nothing on limits, safety or data.

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

Devstral Small 2

  1. ollama run devstral-small-2 is the quickest start, at 15 GB
  2. On vLLM pass --tool-call-parser mistral --enable-auto-tool-choice
  3. Send the system prompt from CHAT_SYSTEM_PROMPT.txt in the repository. The card says results depend on it
  4. Use a low temperature. The repository's default is 0.15
  5. Plan for one tool call per turn
  6. The same model is on our Mistral API listing if you'd rather not host it

DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT

  1. Serve it with sglang serve --model-path google/diffusiongemma-26B-A4B-it --dllm-algorithm Gemma4Renoise --trust-remote-code on SGLang v0.5.22 or later, then call /v1/chat/completions
  2. In Transformers, install transformers>=5.11.0 and load DiffusionGemmaForBlockDiffusion with dtype="auto"; generation_config.json already holds the recommended sampler
  3. Turn thinking on with enable_thinking=True in apply_chat_template or <|think|> at the start of the system prompt, read the reasoning between <|channel>thought and <channel|>, and drop it from history before the next turn
  4. 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
  5. Streaming arrives one 256-token canvas at a time, not token by token
  6. 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, Devstral Small 2 or DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT?

Devstral Small 2 scores 61 (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 risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Devstral Small 2 or DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT

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