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

DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs Kronos

Kronos scores 55.2 (C) on agent readiness against DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT's 50 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT leads on 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 3260 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

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 50
  • Agent interface, 70 against 60

Watch for

No quantised build from Google, so the smallest official build needs the 64 GB band

Kronos C

Best for Agents that need a quick local forecast or synthetic sample of a candlestick series on modest hardware, for research or as one input among others.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 55 against 50

Watch for

Runs only through the publisher's own PyTorch code from GitHub, in no named runtime and with no quantised build

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffusionGemma 26B A4B ITKronosEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255055Kronos +5
Risk20%207050DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +20
Agent interface10%107060DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +10
Documentation and upkeep10%106061Kronos +1
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 50/100C 55.2/100

Facts side by side

FactDiffusionGemma 26B A4B ITKronos
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorGoogle DeepMindYu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua University
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-07-152026-04-13
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularitynone43k stars
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)none

Verdicts

DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT

A fast local generation cousin for low-concurrency work on text, images and video, with optional thinking and Gemma 4's tool format, under Apache 2.0. It needs about 62 GB for Google's BF16 files and runs only in Transformers or SGLang. The main risk is quality, since Google's own figures put it below Gemma 4 26B A4B, and it's labelled experimental.

Kronos

Forecasts the next price bars from a history of up to 512 candlestick bars. Every size fits in under 0.5 GB and runs on a CPU, but only through the publisher's own Python package. Nobody has benchmarked it independently, its quickstart data was deleted from the repository, and the publisher hasn't replied since November 2025.

Before you call either

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

Kronos

  1. Clone https://github.com/shiyu-coder/Kronos and pip install -r requirements.txt, then load Kronos.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-small") and KronosTokenizer.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-Tokenizer-base") and wrap them in KronosPredictor
  2. Pair Kronos-mini with Kronos-Tokenizer-2k and Kronos-small or Kronos-base with Kronos-Tokenizer-base, the cards' pairing
  3. The examples read examples/data/XSHG_5min_600977.csv, which no longer exists; point them at tests/data/regression_input.csv, 2,500 five-minute bars
  4. Keep the lookback at or under max_context, 512 bars, and pass the future timestamps you want as y_timestamp, since the calendar fields come from them
  5. Raise sample_count for a steadier forecast, but expect only the mean back; call the lower-level auto_regressive_inference yourself if you need the paths
  6. Treat forecasts as model output to check, not signals; the README says its own backtest pipeline isn't a production trading system

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT or Kronos?

Kronos scores 55.2 (C) on agent readiness against DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT's 50 (D), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT leads on risk and agent interface.

Other comparisons with DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT or Kronos

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