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

Gemma 4 E4B IT vs MiniCPM-o 4.5

Gemma 4 E4B IT scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against MiniCPM-o 4.5's 61 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

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Which one, for what

Gemma 4 E4B IT B

Best for Agents that need a cheap, permissively licensed helper on 8 GB of memory, for tool calls, short audio or images, rather than hard reasoning

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 90
  • Risk, 70 against 40
  • Agent interface, 85 against 35
  • Documentation and upkeep, 75 against 66

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.8 out of 5

Watch for

No safety evaluation figures published

MiniCPM-o 4.5 C

Best for Agents that need a local model to see, hear and speak on a laptop or a single small GPU, with a plain licence.

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

Watch for

Speech output and full duplex need trust_remote_code with Transformers 4.51.0 or OpenBMB's llama.cpp-omni

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGemma 4 E4B ITMiniCPM-o 4.5Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259590Gemma 4 E4B IT +5
Risk20%207040Gemma 4 E4B IT +30
Agent interface10%108535Gemma 4 E4B IT +50
Documentation and upkeep10%107566Gemma 4 E4B IT +9
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 63.2/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactGemma 4 E4B ITMiniCPM-o 4.5
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorGoogle DeepMindOpenBMB
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0; built from Qwen3-8B, SigLIP2, Whisper-medium and CosyVoice2, all Apache 2.0 on their Hub cards
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-07-202026-10-16
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 reviews3.5/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

Gemma 4 E4B 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 7 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.

MiniCPM-o 4.5

A small omni cousin that sees, listens and talks back, with full-duplex speech and voice cloning, in about 7 GB at 4-bit through llama.cpp or Ollama for text and images. Speech output needs OpenBMB's remote code or llama.cpp-omni, and 28 GB of GPU for the full demo. The main risks are repository code and pickle files and no safety results.

Before you call either

Gemma 4 E4B IT

  1. On the reference machine run llama-server -hf google/gemma-4-E4B-it-qat-q4_0-gguf --hf-file gemma-4-E4B_q4_0-it.gguf --jinja -c 131072, and add --mmproj with gemma-4-E4B-it-mmproj.gguf for images and audio
  2. With Ollama run ollama run gemma4:e4b 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

MiniCPM-o 4.5

  1. Quickest start for text and images is ollama run openbmb/minicpm-o4.5, about 6 GB
  2. With vLLM 0.16.0 or later pass --trust-remote-code, and send stop_token_ids [151643, 151645] as OpenBMB's guide does
  3. vLLM, llama.cpp and Ollama return text only; for speech out use the card's Transformers 4.51.0 code or OpenBMB's llama.cpp-omni
  4. In llama.cpp pass both the language GGUF and MiniCPM-o-4_5-vision-F16.gguf with --mmproj, and use --jinja --reasoning-budget 0 to turn thinking off
  5. Keep prompts within 40,960 tokens
  6. Don't rely on tool calls or JSON output, neither is documented; validate any you get

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Gemma 4 E4B IT or MiniCPM-o 4.5?

Gemma 4 E4B IT scores 63.2 (B) on agent readiness against MiniCPM-o 4.5's 61 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Gemma 4 E4B IT or MiniCPM-o 4.5

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