What does mixture-of-experts mean for Gemma 4 26B A4B IT?

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT has 26B total parameters split across expert sub-networks. A routing mechanism activates roughly 4B parameters per forward pass, selecting the most relevant experts for each input. This reduces compute per token compared to a dense model of equivalent total size.

How does Gemma 4 26B A4B IT compare to the dense Gemma 4 31B?

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT prioritizes latency and throughput by activating fewer parameters per token. The dense Gemma 4 31B activates all 31B parameters, targeting higher output quality at the cost of more compute. Choose Gemma 4 26B A4B IT when speed matters and the dense variant when quality is the priority.

What input modalities does Gemma 4 26B A4B IT support?

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT accepts text and image inputs. It does not generate images or audio. Use it for text generation, visual understanding, and structured output tasks.

What languages does Gemma 4 26B A4B IT support?

Over 140 languages. The instruction-tuning covers multilingual conversational and task-oriented use cases.

How do I use Gemma 4 26B A4B IT on AI Gateway?

Set the model to `google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it` in the AI SDK. AI Gateway handles provider routing, retries, and failover automatically.

Does Gemma 4 26B A4B IT support function-calling and structured output?

Yes. It supports function-calling for agentic workflows, structured JSON output, and system instructions natively, sharing these capabilities with the Gemini 3 architecture it is built on.

Google

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT is Google's open-weight mixture-of-experts model with 26B total parameters and roughly 4B active per forward pass. Built on the Gemini 3 architecture, it supports function-calling, structured JSON output, native vision, and 140+ languages within a context window of 1.0M tokens.

View API reference

Input and output price: Prices from: Input $0.13, Output $0.40, Per 1M tokens
24h uptime: Loading AI Gateway uptime

Get API key Read the docs

import { streamText } from 'ai'

const result = streamText({
  model: 'google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it',
  prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?'
})

Read docs

Overview Playground Providers Uptime Status Throughput Latency API Similar About FAQ

Copy link to headingPlayground

Try out Gemma 4 26B A4B IT by Google. Usage is billed to your team at API rates. Free users (those who haven't made a payment) get $5 of credits every 30 days.

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

Copy link to headingProviders

Route requests across multiple providers. Copy a provider slug to set your preference. Visit the docs for more info. Using a provider means you agree to their terms, listed under Legal.

Provider

Context	Max Output	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

Novita AI

Legal:Terms•Privacy

262K

131K

0.5 s

34 tps

$0.13/M

$0.40/M

—

04/02/2026

Parasail

Legal:Terms•Privacy

262K

131K

0.7 s

22 tps

$0.13/M

$0.40/M

—

04/02/2026

Google Vertex AI

Legal:Terms•Privacy

262K

131K

0.4 s

48 tps

$0.15/M

$0.60/M

Read$0.02/M

—

04/02/2026

GMICloud

Legal:Terms•Privacy

1.0 s

48 tps

$0.13/M

$0.40/M

—

04/02/2026

Getting started

Call Gemma 4 26B A4B IT through AI Gateway with the AI SDK generateText and streamText functions, or through the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Messages APIs by changing the base URL. AI Gateway authenticates the request and routes it to an available provider.

Install the AI SDK (pnpm add ai dotenv), create an API key from the API Keys page, and set it as AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY in your environment. Full setup is covered in the text generation quickstart.

index.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Top-level parameters

The same Gemma 4 26B A4B IT request in each API format AI Gateway supports.

top-level-params.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it',
    system: 'You are a concise technical assistant.',
    prompt: 'Summarize the tradeoffs between static generation and SSR.',
    maxOutputTokens: 1024,
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Standard parameters like prompt, messages, temperature, and tools work as documented in the AI SDK docs. These are the parameters with model-specific behavior.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`model`	`string`	Yes	Model ID in the form `creator/model`, e.g. `google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it`. AI Gateway routes the request to an available provider.
`maxOutputTokens`	`number`	No	Hard cap on generated tokens. Gemma 4 26B A4B IT supports up to `1,048,576` output tokens. Reasoning tokens count toward this limit.
`reasoning`	`'provider-default' \| 'none' \| 'minimal' \| 'low' \| 'medium' \| 'high' \| 'xhigh'`	No	Provider-agnostic reasoning effort, available in AI SDK 7 or later. Maps to the provider’s native reasoning configuration; reasoning settings under `providerOptions` take precedence when both are set. See the Reasoning section below.
`providerOptions`	`Record<string, JSONValue>`	No	AI Gateway routing options under `gateway`, plus any provider-native options under the provider’s own namespace — see the table below.

Input limits

Input	Formats	Sources	Max count	Max size	Limits
Text	—	—	—	—	Prompt and response share the 1M-token context window
Image	—	URL, base64, Uint8Array	—	—	Sent as image parts in messages; counts as input tokens
PDF	—	URL, base64, Uint8Array	—	—	Sent as file parts in messages; counts as input tokens

Provider options

Set AI Gateway routing options under providerOptions.gateway. For provider-specific options, pass them under the provider’s namespace as documented by the AI SDK.

Learn more in the AI SDK google provider docs.

provider-options.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
    providerOptions: {
      gateway: {
        only: ['novita', 'parasail'],
      },
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

These AI Gateway routing options apply to every model. Provider-specific options pass through under the provider’s own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) exactly as documented by the AI SDK.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`providerOptions.gateway.only`	`string[]`	No	Restrict routing to these provider slugs. Requests fail over only within the listed providers.
`providerOptions.gateway.order`	`string[]`	No	Preferred provider order. Listed providers are tried first; unlisted providers remain available as fallbacks.
`providerOptions.gateway.sort`	`'cost' \| 'ttft' \| 'tps'`	No	Rank candidate providers by price, time to first token, or tokens per second instead of the default routing order.
`providerOptions.gateway.zeroDataRetention`	`boolean`	No	Route only to providers with a zero-data-retention policy for this model.

Routing across providers

AI Gateway serves the same model through multiple providers and fails over automatically. order expresses a preference while keeping every provider eligible; only is a hard allowlist — if none of the listed providers are available the request fails instead of falling back.

Options under a provider's own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) are forwarded to that provider with the request. Providers ignore option namespaces that don't apply to them, so it is safe to set provider options alongside gateway routing options.

Reasoning

AI Gateway bridges reasoning across every API format. The AI SDK exposes a provider-agnostic top-level reasoning level (none, minimal, low, medium, high, or xhigh); the Chat Completions and Responses formats take the same effort under reasoning.effort; and the Anthropic Messages format uses a native thinking token budget. Whichever you send, the gateway maps it to the target model’s native configuration, converting between effort levels and token budgets as needed. Reasoning-related settings under providerOptions take full precedence over the top-level reasoning value and are never merged. Reasoning tokens typically count toward your output-token usage, though how they’re reported and billed varies by provider.

Learn more in the AI Gateway reasoning guide.

reasoning.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it',
    prompt: 'Explain the Monty Hall problem step by step.',
    reasoning: 'high',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Image input

Send images alongside text as message parts. Images count as input tokens.

image-input.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it',
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: [
          { type: 'text', text: 'Describe this image.' },
          { type: 'image', image: 'https://example.com/photo.jpg' },
        ],
      },
    ],
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

PDF input

Attach PDFs as file parts. Their contents count as input tokens.

pdf-input.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it',
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: [
          { type: 'text', text: 'Summarize this document.' },
          {
            type: 'file',
            mediaType: 'application/pdf',
            data: 'https://example.com/document.pdf',
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Tool calling

Expose tools the model can call. Define each tool’s inputs with a Zod schema.

tool-calling.ts

import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it',
    prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
    tools: {
      getWeather: tool({
        description: 'Get the current weather for a location',
        inputSchema: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
        execute: async ({ location }) => ({ location, temperatureC: 18 }),
      }),
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Copy link to headingMore models by Google

Model

Context	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	Providers	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

google/gemini-3.8-flash

1.9 s

417 tps

$0.75/M

$3.75/M

Read$0.08/M

$14/K+1 more

09/02/2026

google/gemini-3.7-flash

0.9 s

279 tps

$0.75/M

$3.75/M

Read$0.08/M

$14/K+1 more

08/13/2026

google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite

0.5 s

307 tps

$0.30/M

$2.50/M

Read$0.03/M

$14/K+1 more

07/21/2026

google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite

0.6 s

255 tps

$0.25/M

$1.50/M

Read$0.03/M

$14/K+1 more

05/07/2026

google/gemini-3-flash

0.6 s

199 tps

$0.50/M+1 more

$3/M+1 more

Read$0.05/M

$14/K+1 more

12/17/2025

google/gemini-2.5-flash-lite

0.3 s

271 tps

$0.10/M

$0.40/M

Read$0.01/M

$35/K+1 more

06/17/2025

Copy link to headingAbout Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT is part of Google's Gemma 4 family, the open-weight counterpart to the proprietary Gemini lineup. Google released it on April 2, 2026 as an instruction-tuned mixture-of-experts (MoE) model built on the same architecture as Gemini 3.

The MoE design is the defining characteristic. Of the 26B total parameters, only roughly 4B are active during any single forward pass. A routing mechanism selects which expert sub-networks to activate for each input, so Gemma 4 26B A4B IT achieves quality comparable to a much larger dense model while using a fraction of the compute per token. This translates to lower latency and higher throughput. See live metrics on this page for current throughput.

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT accepts text and image inputs within a context window of 1.0M tokens and supports over 140 languages. It handles function-calling, agentic workflows, structured JSON output, and system instructions natively. The instruction-tuning (indicated by the it suffix) means Gemma 4 26B A4B IT is ready for conversational and task-oriented use out of the box.

Running Gemma 4 26B A4B IT through AI Gateway provides unified billing, observability, automatic retries, and provider failover without requiring infrastructure management.

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Configuration: Evaluate whether the MoE architecture's latency and throughput characteristics fit your workload before selecting a provider variant at production scale.
Zero Data Retention: Zero Data Retention is available for this model. It is offered on a per-provider and model basis. See the documentation for details.
Authentication: AI Gateway authenticates requests using an API key or OIDC token. You do not need to manage provider credentials directly.

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

Best for

Latency-sensitive production workloads: The MoE architecture's lower compute-per-token translates to faster response times
Cost-efficient agentic pipelines: Need function-calling and structured output at high request volumes
Multilingual applications: Serving users across 140+ languages with a single model
Vision-language tasks: Image understanding, visual Q&A, and document analysis within a context window of 1.0M tokens
Open-weight workloads: The ability to inspect model weights matters

Consider alternatives when

Highest output quality needed: Latency is not a constraint, and the dense Gemma 4 31B or a Gemini model may be more appropriate
Native image or audio generation: Your task requires media output, which Gemma 4 26B A4B IT does not support
Simple classification or extraction: A smaller, cheaper model is sufficient for straightforward workloads

Copy link to headingConclusion

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT provides Gemini 3-class capabilities in an open-weight package optimized for throughput. The MoE architecture keeps inference fast and affordable. For teams that need strong multilingual, multimodal reasoning without proprietary lock-in, it is a practical production choice on AI Gateway.

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions

What does mixture-of-experts mean for Gemma 4 26B A4B IT?
Gemma 4 26B A4B IT has 26B total parameters split across expert sub-networks. A routing mechanism activates roughly 4B parameters per forward pass, selecting the most relevant experts for each input. This reduces compute per token compared to a dense model of equivalent total size.
How does Gemma 4 26B A4B IT compare to the dense Gemma 4 31B?
Gemma 4 26B A4B IT prioritizes latency and throughput by activating fewer parameters per token. The dense Gemma 4 31B activates all 31B parameters, targeting higher output quality at the cost of more compute. Choose Gemma 4 26B A4B IT when speed matters and the dense variant when quality is the priority.
What input modalities does Gemma 4 26B A4B IT support?
Gemma 4 26B A4B IT accepts text and image inputs. It does not generate images or audio. Use it for text generation, visual understanding, and structured output tasks.
What languages does Gemma 4 26B A4B IT support?
Over 140 languages. The instruction-tuning covers multilingual conversational and task-oriented use cases.
How do I use Gemma 4 26B A4B IT on AI Gateway?
Set the model to google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it in the AI SDK. AI Gateway handles provider routing, retries, and failover automatically.
Does Gemma 4 26B A4B IT support function-calling and structured output?
Yes. It supports function-calling for agentic workflows, structured JSON output, and system instructions natively, sharing these capabilities with the Gemini 3 architecture it is built on.

Your use is subject to Google's Terms & Privacy Policies.

Agent Stack

Core Platform

Tools

Learn

Build

Explore

Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

Copy link to headingPlayground

Copy link to headingProviders

Copy link to headingUptime24 hours

Copy link to headingThroughput24 hours

Copy link to headingLatency24 hours

Getting started

Top-level parameters

Input limits

Provider options

Routing across providers

Reasoning

Image input

PDF input

Tool calling

Copy link to headingMore models by Google

Copy link to headingAbout Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Gemma 4 26B A4B IT

Best for

Consider alternatives when

Copy link to headingConclusion

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions