Gemma 4 26B A4B vs Qwen3.5 397B

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

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

Gemma 4 26B A4B· Qwen3.5 397B

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5 397B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 26B A4B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.

Qwen3.5 397B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 68 to 64. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen3.5 397B's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 69.7 against 44.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 77.1% to 39%. Gemma 4 26B A4B does hit back in coding, 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 Qwen3.5 397B 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 128K for Qwen3.5 397B.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*Free*
SpeedN/A96 t/s
TTFTN/A2.44s
Context256K128K

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.

BenchmarkGemma 4 26B A4BQwen3.5 397B
Agentic
Terminal-Bench 2.052.5%
BrowseComp62%
OSWorld-Verified62.2%
Claw-Eval48.1%
QwenClawBench51.8%
QwenWebBench1162
TAU3-Bench68.4%
DeepPlanning37.6%
Toolathlon36.3%
MCP Atlas46.1%
MCP-Tasks74.2%
WideResearch74.0%
CodingGemma 4 26B A4B wins
LiveCodeBench77.1%39%
HumanEval75%
SWE-bench Verified76.2%
LiveCodeBench v683.6%
SWE-bench Pro50.9%
SWE Multilingual69.3%
NL2Repo32.2%
Multimodal & GroundedQwen3.5 397B wins
MMMU-Pro73.8%79%
OfficeQA Pro68%
RealWorldQA83.9%
Video-MME (w/o subtitle)84.2%
MathVision88.6%
We-Math87.9%
DynaMath86.3%
MStar83.8%
SimpleVQA67.1%
ChatCVQA80.8%
AI2D_TEST93.9%
CountBench97.2%
RefCOCO (avg)92.3%
ODINW1347.0%
MLVU (M-Avg)86.7%
ScreenSpot Pro65.6%
ReasoningQwen3.5 397B wins
BBH64.8%82%
MRCRv244.1%71%
MuSR78%
LongBench v263.2%
AI-Needle68.7%
KnowledgeQwen3.5 397B wins
GPQA82.3%88.4%
MMLU-Pro82.6%87.8%
HLE17.2%28.7%
HLE w/o tools8.7%
MMLU83%
SuperGPQA70.4%
MMLU-Redux94.9%
C-Eval93%
FrontierScience71%
SimpleQA80%
Instruction Following
IFEval92.6%
IFBench76.5%
Multilingual
MGSM82%
MMLU-ProX84.7%
NOVA-6359.1%
INCLUDE85.6%
PolyMath73.3%
VWT2k-lite78.9%
MAXIFE88.2%
Mathematics
AIME 202383%
AIME 202485%
AIME 202584%
AIME2693.3%
HMMT Feb 202379%
HMMT Feb 202481%
HMMT Feb 202580%
HMMT Feb 202594.8%
HMMT Nov 202592.7%
HMMT Feb 202687.9%
MMAnswerBench80.9%
BRUMO 202582%
MATH-50081%
Frequently Asked Questions (5)

Which is better, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B is ahead overall, 68 to 64. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 77.1% and 39%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 68.2 versus 56.1. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Qwen3.5 397B?

Gemma 4 26B A4B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 77.1 versus 52.2. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 69.7 versus 44.1. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.1 versus 73.8. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: April 2, 2026

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