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

DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs Laguna M.1

Laguna M.1 scores 55.5 (C) on agent readiness against DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT's 50 (D), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT leads on risk 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 2870 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 55
  • Documentation and upkeep, 60 against 36

Watch for

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

Laguna M.1 C

Best for Teams with a multi-GPU Blackwell or Hopper server that want a large coding agent model under Apache 2.0.

Ahead on

  • Capability, 46 against 30
  • Reach, 65 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 against 70

Watch for

The smallest build needs about 167 GB, more than a 128 GB machine

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffusionGemma 26B A4B ITLaguna M.1Edge
Capability35%353046Laguna M.1 +16
Reach25%255065Laguna M.1 +15
Risk20%207055DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +15
Agent interface10%107085Laguna M.1 +15
Documentation and upkeep10%106036DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT +24
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 50/100C 55.5/100

Facts side by side

FactDiffusionGemma 26B A4B ITLaguna M.1
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorGoogle DeepMindPoolside
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-07-152026-07-14
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno 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
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)2.5/5 (4)

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.

Laguna M.1

A large coding and agent cousin under plain Apache 2.0, for agents with a multi-GPU server. Its smallest build needs about 167 GB, more than a 128 GB machine, and no local runtime library packages it. The main risks are no upkeep since July, no hosted fallback shown today, no safety results, and repository code on the SGLang route.

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

Laguna M.1

  1. Run the NVFP4 build on Blackwell GPUs with vllm serve poolside/Laguna-M.1-NVFP4 --tensor-parallel-size 2 --tool-call-parser poolside_v1 --reasoning-parser poolside_v1 --enable-auto-tool-choice, on vLLM 0.21.0 or later
  2. Thinking is off in the template unless you pass enable_thinking true or start the server with --default-chat-template-kwargs '{"enable_thinking": true}', which Poolside recommends for agentic coding
  3. Pass earlier reasoning back as reasoning_content in the history, since the card says reasoning may stop in later steps if it's dropped
  4. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0 and top_k 20
  5. The FP8 build's Docker image and serve.sh predate upstream support and set a 4,096-token context, so prefer a released vLLM
  6. It doesn't fit our 128 GB reference machine at any published precision
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT or Laguna M.1?

Laguna M.1 scores 55.5 (C) on agent readiness against DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT's 50 (D), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT leads on risk and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT or Laguna M.1

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