Gemma vs. Qwen

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

Qwen is Alibaba's broad family of open and hosted models for reasoning, coding, multimodal understanding, and agents. Qwen 3.8 Max Preview is the current generation.

Qwen, formerly Tongyi Qianwen, is a family of language and multimodal models developed by Alibaba. It includes general-purpose, coding, vision-language, audio, embedding, and reasoning variants. Qwen 3.8 Max Preview is the current hosted flagship, with support for multimodal and agentic workflows. Earlier Qwen generations, including Qwen 3.6 checkpoints, remain available as Apache 2.0 open weights; availability and licensing should therefore be checked per model.

Initial release: 2023-09-13

Current generation: Qwen 3.8

Reference

https://qwen.ai/

Further Reading

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.16609
• https://huggingface.co/Qwen
• https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.6-35b-a3b