Gemma 4 26B A4B vs GPT-5.1

All internal benchmark statements below are from our testing. Summary: win/tie breakdown shows Gemma wins 2 tests (structured output, tool calling), GPT-5.1 wins 2 tests (constrained rewriting, safety calibration), and 8 tests tie. Detailed walk-through:

• structured output: Gemma 5 vs GPT-5.1 4 in our tests — Gemma wins. Gemma is tied for 1st with 24 others ("tied for 1st with 24 other models out of 54 tested"), while GPT-5.1 ranks 26 of 54. Practically: Gemma is the safer pick when you need strict JSON/schema compliance and exact formats.

• tool calling: Gemma 5 vs GPT-5.1 4 — Gemma wins and is tied for 1st (tied with 16 others out of 54). GPT-5.1 is rank 18 of 54. In practice, Gemma makes function selection, argument accuracy, and sequencing more reliable in our agent/tool workflows.

• constrained rewriting: Gemma 3 vs GPT-5.1 4 — GPT-5.1 wins and ranks 6 of 53 (good relative position). For tasks requiring tight compression or strict character limits, GPT-5.1 is better in our tests.

• safety calibration: Gemma 1 vs GPT-5.1 2 — GPT-5.1 wins (GPT-5.1 ranks 12 of 55; Gemma ranks 32 of 55). GPT-5.1 is more likely to refuse harmful prompts and better separate disallowed vs allowed content in our suite.

• strategic analysis: tie (both 5) — both tied for 1st in rankings. Both models handle nuanced tradeoff reasoning similarly in our tests.

• creative problem solving: tie (both 4) — both rank 9 of 54; expect comparable idea quality and feasibility.

• faithfulness: tie (both 5) — both tied for 1st; both stick to source material well in our tests.

• classification: tie (both 4) — both tied for 1st; routing/categorization accuracy is comparable.

• long context: tie (both 5) — both tied for 1st; both perform at top-tier for retrieval at 30K+ tokens in our tests.

• persona consistency & multilingual & agentic planning: ties (both 5/4/4 depending) — both models match on persona consistency and multilingual outputs; Gemma and GPT-5.1 share top ranks on multilingual and persona metrics.

Supplementary external benchmarks (Epoch AI): GPT-5.1 scores 68% on SWE-bench Verified and 88.6% on AIME 2025 (these are Epoch AI results, not our internal scores). On those third-party measures GPT-5.1 ranks 7/12 on SWE-bench Verified and 7/23 on AIME 2025 — useful if you prioritize third-party coding/math benchmarks. Gemma has no external SWE-bench or AIME scores in the payload. Overall interpretation: Gemma is superior for schema compliance and tool workflows in our tests; GPT-5.1 is better for safety handling and constrained-rewriting tasks and shows strength on external coding/math benchmarks.

Raw per-mTok rates from the payload: Gemma input $0.08 / mtok, output $0.35 / mtok; GPT-5.1 input $1.25 / mtok, output $10.00 / mtok. If your workload is output-dominant (billing on output tokens): for 1M tokens/month Gemma costs $350 vs GPT-5.1 $10,000; for 10M tokens Gemma $3,500 vs GPT-5.1 $100,000; for 100M tokens Gemma $35,000 vs GPT-5.1 $1,000,000. If input and output are balanced 50/50, per-month totals for 1M tokens: Gemma ≈ $215 (500 mtok input + 500 mtok output) vs GPT-5.1 ≈ $5,625. The price ratio in the payload (0.035) reflects that Gemma is ~3.5% of GPT-5.1 cost on comparable token mixes. Who should care: high-volume products (chat platforms, generative content at scale, embedded assistants) will see huge savings with Gemma; research teams or safety-critical deployments that require GPT-5.1’s higher safety calibration score should budget accordingly.

Choose Gemma 4 26B A4B if: you need strict structured output (JSON/schema), robust tool calling, long-context multimodal inputs, or are operating at high token volumes — Gemma scores 5 vs GPT-5.1's 4 on structured output and tool calling and costs ~3.5% as much per token. Choose GPT-5.1 if: safety calibration and tight constrained rewriting matter, or you rely on third-party coding/math benchmarks — GPT-5.1 scored higher on safety (2 vs 1) and constrained rewriting (4 vs 3) in our tests and posts 68% on SWE-bench Verified and 88.6% on AIME 2025 (Epoch AI). If you must balance both, test the specific task: Gemma will save you on cost and match GPT-5.1 on most tie areas; GPT-5.1 is the conservative pick for safety-sensitive or math/coding-critical workloads.