Gemma 4 26B A4B vs GPT-5.2

Summary of our 12-test comparison (our internal suite): GPT-5.2 wins 4 tests, Gemma wins 2, and 6 tests tie. Detailed walk-through: - Safety calibration: GPT-5.2 scores 5 vs Gemma 1; GPT-5.2 ranks tied for 1st of 55 (tied with 4 others) in our safety calibration ranking — important for refusing harmful requests and allowing legitimate ones. - Agentic planning: GPT-5.2 scores 5 vs Gemma 4; GPT-5.2 is tied for 1st of 54 (14 others) — better at goal decomposition and failure recovery in our tests. - Creative problem solving: GPT-5.2 5 vs Gemma 4; GPT-5.2 ranks tied for 1st of 54 (7 others) — stronger at non-obvious, specific ideas. - Constrained rewriting: GPT-5.2 4 vs Gemma 3; GPT-5.2 ranks 6th of 53 in this task, so it handles tight character limits better. - Structured output: Gemma 5 vs GPT-5.2 4; Gemma is tied for 1st with 24 others out of 54 — it produces more reliable JSON/schema-compliant outputs in our testing. - Tool calling: Gemma 5 vs GPT-5.2 4; Gemma is tied for 1st (16 others) while GPT-5.2 ranks 18 of 54 — Gemma picked correct functions, arguments and sequencing more often in our runs. Ties (no clear winner in our suite): strategic analysis (both 5), faithfulness (both 5), classification (both 4), long context (both 5), persona consistency (both 5), multilingual (both 5). External benchmarks: GPT-5.2 scores 73.8% on SWE-bench Verified (Epoch AI) and ranks 5 of 12 there, and scores 96.1% on AIME 2025 (Epoch AI) where it ranks 1 of 23; these third‑party results support GPT-5.2’s coding/math strengths. Gemma has no external SWE-bench or AIME scores in the payload; our internal tests show it matches or exceeds GPT-5.2 on structured output and tool calling but trails on safety and agentic planning.

Output pricing: Gemma 4 26B A4B charges $0.35 per mTok of output tokens; GPT-5.2 charges $14 per mTok. For 1M output tokens/month (1,000 mTok) that is $350 (Gemma) vs $14,000 (GPT-5.2). At 10M tokens: $3,500 vs $140,000. At 100M tokens: $35,000 vs $1,400,000. If you include input+output (Gemma input $0.08 + output $0.35 = $0.43/mTok; GPT-5.2 input $1.75 + output $14 = $15.75/mTok) the all-token monthly costs are: 1M tokens = $430 vs $15,750; 10M = $4,300 vs $157,500; 100M = $43,000 vs $1,575,000. The cost gap matters most for high-volume consumer apps, batch processing, or real-time services with millions of tokens. Teams focused on safety-critical or high-R&D features may accept GPT-5.2’s premium; cost-sensitive production workloads should strongly consider Gemma.

Choose Gemma 4 26B A4B if you need low cost plus best-in-class structured output and tool calling: it costs $0.35/mTok output (vs $14/mTok for GPT-5.2), has a 262,144 token context window, and tied for 1st on structured output and tool calling in our tests. Choose GPT-5.2 if safety, agentic planning, creative problem solving or highest-confidence handling of adversarial prompts matter: GPT-5.2 scored 5/5 on safety calibration and agentic planning and posts strong external scores (73.8% on SWE-bench Verified and 96.1% on AIME 2025 per Epoch AI). If your app is high-volume and cost-sensitive, Gemma. If your app is safety-critical or research-grade reasoning and you can absorb the premium, GPT-5.2.