1-bit Bonsai 8B vs Gemma 4 26B A4B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

1-bit Bonsai 8B· Gemma 4 26B A4B

Quick Verdict

Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. 1-bit Bonsai 8B only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Gemma 4 26B A4B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 64 to 50. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Gemma 4 26B A4B's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 56.1 against 30. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 30% to 82.3%. 1-bit Bonsai 8B does hit back in reasoning, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Gemma 4 26B A4B is the reasoning model in the pair, while 1-bit Bonsai 8B is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Gemma 4 26B A4B gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 64K for 1-bit Bonsai 8B.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*Free*
SpeedN/AN/A
TTFTN/AN/A
Context64K256K

Decision framing

BenchLM keeps the benchmark table and the operator tradeoffs on the same page so a better score does not hide a materially slower, pricier, or smaller-context model.

Runtime metrics show N/A when BenchLM does not have a sourced snapshot for that exact model. The scoring rules and freshness policy are documented on the methodology page.

Benchmark1-bit Bonsai 8BGemma 4 26B A4B
Agentic
Coming soon
Coding
LiveCodeBench77.1%
Multimodal & Grounded
MMMU-Pro73.8%
Reasoning1-bit Bonsai 8B wins
MuSR50%
BBH64.8%
MRCRv244.1%
KnowledgeGemma 4 26B A4B wins
GPQA30%82.3%
MMLU-Pro82.6%
HLE17.2%
HLE w/o tools8.7%
Instruction Following
IFEval79.8%
Multilingual
Coming soon
Mathematics
MATH-50066%
Frequently Asked Questions (3)

Which is better, 1-bit Bonsai 8B or Gemma 4 26B A4B?

Gemma 4 26B A4B is ahead overall, 64 to 50. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 30% and 82.3%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, 1-bit Bonsai 8B or Gemma 4 26B A4B?

Gemma 4 26B A4B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.1 versus 30. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, 1-bit Bonsai 8B or Gemma 4 26B A4B?

1-bit Bonsai 8B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 50 versus 44.1. Gemma 4 26B A4B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.

Last updated: April 2, 2026

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