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

DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs Muse Glimmer 30B

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT's 50 (D), and leads in every scored category. 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

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

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

Muse Glimmer 30B BB

Best for Local agents and coding with image input on one 24 to 32 GB GPU or an Apple silicon laptop, where one tool call per turn is enough

Ahead on

  • Capability, 50 against 30
  • Reach, 90 against 50
  • Risk, 80 against 70
  • Agent interface, 75 against 70
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.8 against 2.5 out of 5

Watch for

One tool call per turn and no parallel calls

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDiffusionGemma 26B A4B ITMuse Glimmer 30BEdge
Capability35%353050Muse Glimmer 30B +20
Reach25%255090Muse Glimmer 30B +40
Risk20%207080Muse Glimmer 30B +10
Agent interface10%107075Muse Glimmer 30B +5
Documentation and upkeep10%106065Muse Glimmer 30B +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 50/100BB 70/100

Facts side by side

FactDiffusionGemma 26B A4B ITMuse Glimmer 30B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorGoogle DeepMindMeta
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-07-152026-10-20
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
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)3.8/5 (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.

Muse Glimmer 30B

A dense 30B multimodal cousin for local agent and coding work with images, documented tool calls and adjustable reasoning. Meta's 17 GB GGUF fits a 24 GB card and runs in llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers. The main risks are one tool call per turn, no documented JSON output and a usage policy that adds limits to Apache 2.0.

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

Muse Glimmer 30B

  1. Start it with llama serve -hf meta-models/Muse-Glimmer-30B-GGUF --hf-file Muse-Glimmer-30B-KQuant-17GB-Q4_K_M.gguf -ngl 99 -c 131072 --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8080 --chat-template-kwargs '{"reasoning_strength":"high"}' on llama.cpp b10353 or later, or ollama run muse-glimmer on Ollama 0.32.7 or later
  2. In vLLM pass --tool-call-parser muse_glimmer --reasoning-parser muse_glimmer, in SGLang muse for both, in ExecuTorch --tool-parser atem. Without them tool calls come back as plain text
  3. Set reasoning per request with chat_template_kwargs.reasoning_strength (low, medium, high or xhigh). llama.cpp and ExecuTorch don't read reasoning_effort, and ExecuTorch rejects it with a 400
  4. Expect one tool call per turn and return each result before the next. ExecuTorch's server rejects tool_choice="required"
  5. Keep temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 64, don't run greedy, and never stop on <|eom|>
  6. Leave max_tokens room for reasoning, since in llama.cpp a request cut off mid-thought returns empty content with finish_reason length
  7. For images add Meta's 1.4 GB mmproj GGUF, which takes the build to about 22 GB with the runtime's fifth

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT or Muse Glimmer 30B?

Muse Glimmer 30B scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT's 50 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT or Muse Glimmer 30B

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