API cost decision in 10 seconds
Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) vs 🔥Nemotron 3 Super (free)
The standard workload cost is tied; choose by context window, provider fit, latency, or model quality.
Budget verdict
The standard workload cost is tied; choose by context window, provider fit, latency, or model quality.
Both models are estimated at $0 for the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload.
Context-window winner: Nemotron 3 Super (free). Cost does not separate this pair on the standard workload, so the next decision point is context window and model behavior.
Cost sensitivity
Workload Sensitivity
The two models stay tied across the input-heavy, balanced, and output-heavy sample workloads.
| Workload shape | Token mix | Better pick | Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) | Nemotron 3 Super (free) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input-heavy / RAG | 5M input + 500K output | Tie | $0 | $0 |
| Balanced workload | 1M input + 1M output | Tie | $0 | $0 |
| Output-heavy chatbot | 1M input + 5M output | Tie | $0 | $0 |
Estimate your workload cost
Your Workload Cost
This estimate uses normalized public API pricing per 1M tokens. It is a planning aid, not a billing quote. Verify provider pricing, limits, and terms before production use.
Quick Decision
Tie has the lower input price, Tie has the lower output price, and Nemotron 3 Super (free) offers the larger context window.
For a 1M input token plus 500K output token workload, the estimated API cost is $0 for Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) and $0 for Nemotron 3 Super (free).
Choose Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) when its provider, model quality, latency, or availability is more important than the numeric price/context winner.
Choose Nemotron 3 Super (free) when you care most about larger context window.
| Feature | Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) (Google) | 🔥Nemotron 3 Super (free) (NVIDIA) |
|---|---|---|
| Input Price prompt tokens per 1M | $0 | $0 |
| Completion Price per 1M tokens | $0 | $0 |
| Sample Workload Cost 1M input + 500K output | $0 | $0 |
| Context Window | 262.14K | 1M |
| Release Date | 2026-04-03 | 2026-03-11 |
| Popularity | #9 |
Gemma 4 26B A4B IT is an instruction-tuned Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model from Google DeepMind. Despite 25.2B total parameters, only 3.8B activate per token during inference — delivering near-31B quality at...
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super is a 120B-parameter open hybrid MoE model, activating just 12B parameters for maximum compute efficiency and accuracy in complex multi-agent applications. Built on a hybrid Mamba-Transformer...
Use-Case Decision Matrix
| Use case | Better pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Budget-constrained production | Tie | Both models are estimated at $0 for the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload. |
| High-volume input processing | Tie | Lower prompt-token price matters most when prompts or retrieved passages dominate the bill. |
| Long responses and chatbots | Tie | Lower output-token price matters most when assistants generate many completion tokens. |
| RAG or long-document work | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | A larger context window leaves more room for retrieved passages and source files. |