Gemma 4 (Google) vs StepFun Step 3.5 Flash
Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.
Gemma 4 (Google)
Google DeepMind's open-weights model family -- multimodal, 256K context, runs on edge devices
StepFun Step 3.5 Flash
StepFun's (China) agent-focused open-weight model -- Step 3.5 Flash launched 2026-02-01. 196B sparse MoE, ~11B active. Benchmarks slightly ahead of DeepSeek V3.2 at over 3x smaller total size. Step 3 (321B / 38B active, Apache 2.0) and Step3-VL-10B multimodal also in the family
| Category | Gemma 4 (Google) | StepFun Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 7.0 | 6.0 |
| Output Quality | 8.0 | 8.0 |
| Value | 10.0 | 9.0 |
| Features | 8.0 | 8.0 |
| Overall | 8.3 | 7.8 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Gemma 4 (Google) | StepFun Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0 |
Benchmark Head-to-Head
Gemma 4 31B benchmarks — StepFun Step 3.5 Flash has no published benchmarks
| Benchmark | Description | Score |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU | Knowledge across 57 subjects | 83% |
| GPQA Diamond | Graduate-level science questions | 84.3% |
| AIME 2026 | 89.2% | |
| HumanEval | Python code generation | 85% |
Which Should You Pick?
Pick Gemma 4 (Google) if...
- ✓Easier to use (7 vs 6)
- ✓Better value for money (10/10)
Developers and businesses who need a permissively licensed multimodal LLM they can self-host or fine-tune. Especially good for multilingual use cases and on-device deployment.
Visit Gemma 4 (Google)Pick StepFun Step 3.5 Flash if...
Teams building agent systems on Chinese open-weight foundations who want something other than DeepSeek or Qwen, especially if agentic tool-use is the primary workload. Also good for Chinese-market products where StepFun's domestic tuning advantages matter. And for anyone looking to add diversity to their open-weight evaluation matrix beyond the top-3 Chinese labs.
Visit StepFun Step 3.5 FlashOur Verdict
Gemma 4 (Google) edges out StepFun Step 3.5 Flash with a 8.3 vs 7.8 overall score. Both are solid picks, but Gemma 4 (Google) has the advantage in value.