Compare / Qwen3 8B vs Gemma 4 E4B
Qwen3 8B vs Gemma 4 E4B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Qwen3 8B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 48.5 vs 38.2. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Qwen3 8B wins 3 and Gemma 4 E4B wins 0. Both need about 6.8 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Qwen3 8B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you need math and reasoning
- you work with long documents
Pick Gemma 4 E4B if…
- you need image input
Specifications
| Qwen3 8B | Gemma 4 E4B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 48.5 (likely 44–53) | 38.2 (likely 34–42) |
| Lab | Alibaba (Qwen) · China | Google · United States |
| Released | 2025-04-29 | 2026-04-02 |
| Parameters | 8.2B (dense) | 8B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~6.8 GB | ~5.6 GB |
| Context window | 131K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Input | text | text, image, audio |
| Reasoning | Hybrid (thinking on/off) | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 7.5M | 4.1M |
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 | Qwen3 8B | Gemma 4 E4B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | ≈ 71 | 69.4 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 62.0 | 58.6 |
| AIME Math | 67.3 | 42.5 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 57.5 | 52.0 |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | — | 42.2 |
| MMMU-Pro Vision | — | 52.6 |
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, Qwen3 8B or Gemma 4 E4B?
Qwen3 8B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 48.5 vs 38.2. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Qwen3 8B wins 3 and Gemma 4 E4B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 6.8 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Qwen3 8B has the longer context window: 131K tokens against 128K.
Can I use Qwen3 8B and Gemma 4 E4B commercially?
Both are released under the Apache-2.0 license. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.