Side-by-side comparison of Gemma 4 26B A4B Instruct (Google DeepMind · United States) and Mistral Small 4 (Mistral AI · France) for self-hosted deployment of the open-weight model. Gemma 4 26B A4B Instruct is rated conditional; Mistral Small 4 is EU-ready. They part ways on commercial use: Gemma 4 26B A4B Instruct is "Unrestricted", Mistral Small 4 is "Yes".
| Field | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | ||
| Verdict | Conditional Based on published licence terms, Gemma 4 26B A4B ships under pure Apache 2.0 with no prohibited-use carve-outs — a departure from prior Gemma generations. The sparse-MoE architecture (25.2B total / 3.8B active) puts it in an ambiguous zone for EU AI Act GPAI systemic-risk classification, and US origin plus image-input support add transparency obligations that deployers should document. | EU-ready Unified model folding Instruct, reasoning (Magistral) and code (Devstral) into a single 119B MoE under Apache 2.0. 6.5B active params, 256K context, 24 languages, toggleable reasoning effort. Strongest permissive EU option at this scale. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-04-17 | 2026-04-15 |
| Open-weight | ||
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Commercial use | Unrestricted | Yes |
| Training data | Domain-level summary | Undisclosed |
| Origin | United States | EU |
| Performance & pricing? | ||
| Quality index | 27/100 | 19/100 |
| Speed | — | 147 tok/s |
| Blended price | — | $0.26/M |
| Context window | — | — |
| Evidence | ||
| Sources | ||
No overlapping sources between the two entries.