Gemma vs. Grok

Overview

Gemma is Google's family of efficient open models for local, edge, and self-hosted deployment. Gemma 4 is the current generation, spanning mobile-scale through workstation-scale models.

Google introduced Gemma in February 2024 as a family of lightweight open models built from the same research used for Gemini. Gemma 2 improved efficiency and model quality, while Gemma 3 added multimodal input and longer context. Gemma 4, released in April 2026 under Apache 2.0, adds advanced reasoning, agentic tool use, code generation, image and video understanding, and models ranging from edge-focused E2B and E4B variants to 12B, 26B mixture-of-experts, and 31B dense checkpoints.

Initial release: 2024-02-21

Current generation: Gemma 4

Reference

https://ai.google.dev/gemma

Further Reading

• https://ai.google.dev/gemma/docs
• https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/gemma-4/

Overview

Grok is the proprietary model family available through xAI's products and API. Grok 4.5 is the current generation, focused on coding, agentic tasks, reasoning, and knowledge work.

xAI introduced Grok in November 2023 and released the weights for Grok-1 under Apache 2.0 in March 2024. Later generations are proprietary and available through Grok, X, and the xAI API. Grok 4.5, released in July 2026, is xAI's current flagship model for software engineering, tool-driven agents, complex reasoning, and professional knowledge work.

Initial release: 2023-11-05

Current generation: Grok 4.5

Reference

https://x.ai/news/grok-4-5

Further Reading

• https://github.com/xai-org/grok-1/tree/main
• https://x.ai/news/grok-4-5