Google Gemma 4 26B A4B vs IBM Granite 4.2 8B
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- Granite 4.2 8B is 1.7× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- Gemma 4 26B A4B accepts longer prompts: 262K vs 131K tokens.
- Granite 4.2 8B is the newer model (released 2026-08-31).
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | Granite 4.2 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | IBM | |
| Released | 2026-04-03 | 2026-08-31 |
| Input / 1M | $0.09 | $0.06 |
| Output / 1M | $0.30 | $0.15 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.05 | $0.015 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.143 | $0.082 |
| Context | 262K | 131K |
| Max output | 236K | 118K |
| Accepts | text, image, video | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 15 | 2 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $0.22 | $0.15 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | — |
Cost calculator
Gemma 4 26B A4B
$9.90 per month$0.33 per day
Granite 4.2 8B
$5.85 per month$0.20 per day
Granite 4.2 8B saves $4.05 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare Gemma 4 26B A4B with