Gemma 4 26B A4B IT vs Gemma 4 E2B IT

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

A fast mixture-of-experts cousin for general agent work with tools, optional thinking and image input, under Apache 2.0. Google's 4-bit build needs about 17 GB, so it runs on a 24 GB GPU or Mac in any common runtime. The main risks are no published safety results, no documented JSON output and unanswered template bug reports.

Gemma 4 E2B IT

A small cousin for light agent work, tool-calling loops, transcription and image reading on a phone or laptop, under Apache 2.0. Google's 4-bit build needs about 5 GB with working space and runs in all the common runtimes. Google's card puts it far below larger Gemma 4 sizes on agent and coding tasks, with no published safety results.

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

1. On the reference machine run llama-server -hf google/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-qat-q4_0-gguf --hf-file gemma-4-26B_q4_0-it.gguf --jinja -c 65536, and add the mmproj file for images
2. With Ollama run ollama run gemma4:26b and raise num_ctx or OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH, since Google's guide says it defaults to 4K below 24 GiB of VRAM and agents want at least 64K
3. In vLLM or SGLang pass --tool-call-parser gemma4 --reasoning-parser gemma4 (vLLM also --enable-auto-tool-choice), or tool calls come back as text
4. Thinking is off by default; pass enable_thinking=True or start the system prompt with <|think|>, and drop earlier turns' thinking from history except on tool-call turns
5. Validate tool names and arguments before running them, and check any JSON yourself

Gemma 4 E2B IT

1. On the reference machine run llama-server -hf google/gemma-4-E2B-it-qat-q4_0-gguf --hf-file gemma-4-E2B_q4_0-it.gguf --jinja -c 131072, and add --mmproj with gemma-4-E2B-it-mmproj.gguf for images and audio
2. With Ollama run ollama run gemma4:e2b and raise num_ctx or OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH, since the default context is small and agents want at least 64K
3. In vLLM or SGLang pass --tool-call-parser gemma4 --reasoning-parser gemma4 (vLLM also --enable-auto-tool-choice), or tool calls come back as text; Google's w4a16 build is the 4-bit route there
4. Thinking is off by default; pass enable_thinking=True or start the system prompt with <|think|>, and drop earlier turns' thinking from history except on tool-call turns
5. Put images before the text and audio after it, keep audio to 30 seconds and video to 60 frames, and validate tool names and arguments before running them