AI Tool Comparison
Gemma 3 vs Llama 4
A side-by-side breakdown to help you pick the right tool for your workflow.
Gemma 3
Superseded by Gemma 4 (April 2026), Gemini-3-derived reasoning and agentic capability in five open sizes from 2B to 31B, running on phones, laptops, or servers with a 256K context window.
Llama 4
Llama 4 Scout and Maverick remain Meta's last open-weight frontier models (April 2025) with up to 10M-token context. Meta paused the open Llama line in 2026 in favor of a new proprietary flagship.
Bottom Line
Last reviewed: August 2026
Gemma 3 and Llama 4 both compete in Models, overlapping most directly on models. Llama 4 carries the higher rating (4.6 vs 4.5), but a gap that size rarely overrides a real workflow fit on its own.
Choose Gemma 3 if…
Best for developers who need to self-host or fine-tune a capable open-weight model without cloud API dependency, and its edge is sizes from 1B to 27B parameters covering everything from on-device inference to serious workloads. A strong, well-documented open-weight option, expect real self-hosting expertise required and a gap versus frontier closed models.
Choose Llama 4 if…
Best for developers and companies who want to self-host a capable model instead of calling a closed API, and its edge is open weights with a long context window and multimodal input, competitive with closed frontier models on most benchmarks. The default open-weight choice until something newer ships, but running the larger variants requires real hardware.
| Attribute | Gemma 3 | Llama 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Models | Models |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Pricing Detail | Free and open-weight (Apache 2.0), now on Gemma 4 | Free and open-weight, no Llama 5 has shipped |
| Rating |
Key Features
Gemma 3
- Open weights
- Multilingual and multimodal
- Multiple sizes
- Runs on single GPU
Llama 4
- Open weights
- Long context window
- Multimodal variants
- Huge fine-tuning ecosystem
Pros
Gemma 3
- •High quality and open
- •Good documentation
- •Flexible sizes
Llama 4
- •Industry-standard open model
- •Massive community support
- •Free to use
Cons
Gemma 3
- Self-hosting expertise needed
- Behind frontier closed models
Llama 4
- Large variants need serious hardware
- License restrictions at scale