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The Gemma model family

Gemma is Google DeepMind's family of open models: the weights are published, so you download them and run them on your own hardware — a laptop, a phone, or a cluster you control. Nothing is sent to a server unless you choose to send it.

The family has two halves. A mainline generation — Gemma 1 through Gemma 4 — is the general purpose model most people want. Around each generation sits a set of variants: the same architecture retrained or restructured for one job, like embeddings, safety classification or vision-language tasks. A variant always descends from a specific generation, which is what the tree below shows.

How the family fits together

  1. Gemma The first generation of Gemma text models
  2. Gemma 2 Text models in 2B, 9B and 27B
  3. Gemma 3 Multimodal text and image models, 270M to 27B
  4. Gemma 4 Multimodal text, image and audio input across five sizes

Each variant sits under the generation its own model page names as its base.

Gemma 4

The current generation, and where to start unless you need something a variant does.

Variant Parameters Input Context Intended Platform
E2B 2B effective Text, Image, Audio, Video 128K Mobile devices
E4B 4B effective Text, Image, Audio, Video 128K Mobile and laptops
12B 12B Text, Image, Audio, Video 256K Laptops and desktops
26B A4B 26B (4B active) Text, Image, Video 256K Desktops and servers
31B 31B Text, Image, Video 256K Servers

Audio and video support

Audio input is native to E2B, E4B and 12B. The 26B A4B and 31B models accept video as individual frames — that is, as images — but do not process audio.

Run one now or read the Gemma 4 model card for the full technical detail.

Earlier generations

Still supported, and still the right choice when a smaller or text-only model is enough.

Gemma 3n

The on-device member of the Gemma 3 generation.

Size Input ➔ Output Intended Platform
E2B Text, images, audio ➔ Text Mobile devices
E4B Text, images, audio ➔ Text Mobile devices and laptops

Gemma 3

Size Input ➔ Output Intended Platform
270M Text ➔ Text Mobile devices and single board computers
1B Text ➔ Text Mobile devices and single board computers
4B Text, images ➔ Text Desktop computers and small servers
12B Text, images ➔ Text Higher-end desktop computers and servers
27B Text, images ➔ Text Large servers or server clusters

Gemma 2

Size Input ➔ Output Intended Platform
2B Text ➔ Text Mobile devices and laptops
9B Text ➔ Text Higher-end desktop computers and servers
27B Text ➔ Text Large servers or server clusters

Gemma

Size Input ➔ Output Intended Platform
2B Text ➔ Text Mobile devices and laptops
7B Text ➔ Text Desktop computers and small servers

Choosing between them

  • Just starting? Take the current generation, instruction-tuned, at the smallest size that fits your hardware. It answers a wide range of prompts with no further training.
  • Need a specific job done? Check whether a variant already does it — embeddings (EmbeddingGemma), safety labelling (ShieldGemma), tool calling (FunctionGemma) — before fine-tuning a core model yourself.
  • On a phone or edge device? Gemma 3n and the Gemma 4 E2B and E4B sizes are built for it.

For the full dated history of every release, see Releases.