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

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT vs GLM-4.7-Flash

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT scores 72.2 (BB) on agent readiness against GLM-4.7-Flash's 63 (B), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories. 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

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT BB

Best for Agents on a 24 GB or larger GPU or Mac that want a fast, permissively licensed tool-calling model with images and long context

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 80
  • Risk, 70 against 55
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 28

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.8 against 2.8 out of 5

Watch for

No safety evaluation figures published

GLM-4.7-Flash B

Best for Agents and developers who want a small, permissively licensed tool-calling model on one 24 to 32 GB GPU or Mac, in almost any runtime

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

Watch for

No change to the files since 29 January 2026 and no zai-org reply on discussions since 31 January

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGemma 4 26B A4B ITGLM-4.7-FlashEdge
Capability35%355959even
Reach25%259080Gemma 4 26B A4B IT +10
Risk20%207055Gemma 4 26B A4B IT +15
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%106528Gemma 4 26B A4B IT +37
Negative events≤1500
TotalBB 72.2/100B 63/100

Facts side by side

FactGemma 4 26B A4B ITGLM-4.7-Flash
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorGoogle DeepMindZ.ai (Zhipu AI)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-202026-01-29
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 reviews3.8/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

GLM-4.7-Flash

A small MIT-licensed mixture-of-experts model with about 3B active parameters, for local agent and coding work with several tool calls per turn and optional thinking. It runs in Ollama at about 23 GB and in nearly every common runtime. The main risk is neglect, with no changes or replies since early February and no safety results.

Before you call either

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

GLM-4.7-Flash

  1. On our reference machine start it with vllm serve zai-org/GLM-4.7-Flash --max-model-len 65536 --tool-call-parser glm47 --reasoning-parser glm45 --enable-auto-tool-choice --served-model-name glm-4.7-flash
  2. Or run ollama run glm-4.7-flash for the 19 GB q4_K_M build
  3. Without the glm47 and glm45 parsers, tool calls and reasoning come back as plain text
  4. Use a released vLLM (0.32.0 or later) or SGLang (0.5.22 or later); the card's nightly and pull-request builds date from January 2026
  5. Pass chat_template_kwargs: {"enable_thinking": false} for short tasks, since thinking is on by default
  6. Set clear_thinking: false to keep earlier reasoning in multi-turn agent work, as Z.ai does for τ²-Bench and Terminal Bench
  7. Set the context length yourself, since config.json allows 202,752 tokens and tokenizer_config.json says 128,000

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Gemma 4 26B A4B IT or GLM-4.7-Flash?

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT scores 72.2 (BB) on agent readiness against GLM-4.7-Flash's 63 (B), and leads in 3 of 5 scored categories.

Other comparisons with Gemma 4 26B A4B IT or GLM-4.7-Flash

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