Compare / Spark-X2.6 4B vs Gemma 3 4B

Spark-X2.6 4B vs Gemma 3 4B

Updated November 2026

Verdict

Spark-X2.6 4B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 67.5 vs 17.5. On the 1 benchmark both labs report, Spark-X2.6 4B wins 1 and Gemma 3 4B wins 0. Both need about 3.5 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Gemma 3 4B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.042 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.

Pick Spark-X2.6 4B if…

you want the strongest model overall
you work with long documents
you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)

Pick Gemma 3 4B if…

you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
you need image input
you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)

Specifications

	Spark-X2.6 4B	Gemma 3 4B
Small LM Index	67.5 (likely 65–70)	17.5 (likely 13–23)
Lab	SparkLLM (XHToken) · China	Google · United States
Released	2026-10-19	2025-03-12
Parameters	4.1B (dense)	4.3B (dense)
Memory at 4-bit	~3.4 GB	~3.5 GB
Context window	1M tokens	128K tokens
Input	text	text, image
Reasoning	Hybrid (thinking on/off)	No thinking
License	Apache-2.0	Gemma
API price / 1M tokens	Self-host only	$0.042 ($0.040 in, $0.050 out)
Hugging Face downloads (30 days)	18.9K	982K

Benchmarks

Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.

Benchmark	Spark-X2.6 4B	Gemma 3 4B
MMLU-Pro Knowledge	≈ 83	43.6
GPQA Diamond Knowledge	77.1	30.8
Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning	17.9	≈ 1
AIME Math	91.2	≈ 12
LiveCodeBench Coding	≈ 78	12.6
SWE-bench Verified Coding	62.8	≈ 5
τ²-Bench Agentic	86.9	—
IFBench Instruction following	75.8	—
IFEval Instruction following	93.6	—
BFCL Agentic	71.8	—
HMMT Math	81.3	—
AA-LCR Long context	67.3	—
SciCode Coding	36.8	—

Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.

Questions

Which is better, Spark-X2.6 4B or Gemma 3 4B?

Spark-X2.6 4B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 67.5 vs 17.5. On the 1 benchmark both labs report, Spark-X2.6 4B wins 1 and Gemma 3 4B wins 0.

Which is cheaper to run?

Only Gemma 3 4B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.042 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 3.5 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.

Which has the longer context window?

Spark-X2.6 4B has the longer context window: 1M tokens against 128K.

Can I use Spark-X2.6 4B and Gemma 3 4B commercially?

Spark-X2.6 4B is released under Apache-2.0 and Gemma 3 4B under Gemma. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.