Is Gemma 2 27B a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Gemma 2 27B on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026
As of Sep 23, 2026, Gemma 2 27B is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GLM 5.3 Flash scores 240.6 higher and costs 63% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
GLM 5.3 Flash is both better and cheaper than Gemma 2 27B: 240.6 points higher on LMArena and 63% less per million tokens, $0.41 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1231.3
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.650/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1471.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.237/M
Gemma 2 27B takes text, returns up to 2,048 tokens from a 8,192-token context, and is listed by 1 seller.
Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 52 models dominate it and give up nothing, none does so with a trade-off. Gemma 2 27B scores 1231.3 at $0.65 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1471.9 +240.6 | $0.237/M | 63% |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 1464.8 +233.5 | $0.544/M | 16% |
| Qwen3.7 Plus | 1454.2 +222.9 | $0.560/M | 14% |
| Gemma 4 31B | 1441.7 +210.4 | $0.153/M | 77% |
| Hy3 | 1440.6 +209.3 | $0.144/M | 78% |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | 1434.5 +203.2 | $0.143/M | 78% |
| MiniMax M3 | 1433.5 +202.2 | $0.525/M | 19% |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | 1431.8 +200.5 | $0.103/M | 84% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1429.9 +198.6 | $0.450/M | 31% |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427.4 +196.1 | $0.175/M | 73% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 1424.8 +193.5 | $0.302/M | 54% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 Exp | 1422.6 +191.3 | $0.305/M | 53% |
| Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct | 1420.6 +189.3 | $0.632/M | 3% |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 | 1419.8 +188.5 | $0.153/M | 76% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 | 1419.7 +188.4 | $0.425/M | 35% |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct | 1417.6 +186.3 | $0.343/M | 47% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus | 1416.9 +185.6 | $0.453/M | 30% |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | 1415.3 +184.0 | $0.563/M | 13% |
| Inkling Small | 1412.3 +181.0 | $0.637/M | 2% |
| Qwen3.5-27B | 1408.1 +176.8 | $0.536/M | 18% |
| MiniMax M2.7 | 1404.6 +173.3 | $0.525/M | 19% |
| Step 3.5 Flash | 1403.7 +172.4 | $0.150/M | 77% |
| Qwen3.5-Flash | 1397.7 +166.4 | $0.114/M | 83% |
| Qwen3.5-35B-A3B | 1395.5 +164.2 | $0.547/M | 16% |
| GLM 4.5 Air | 1383.7 +152.4 | $0.310/M | 52% |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 | 1383.6 +152.3 | $0.084/M | 87% |
| Solar Pro 4 | 1377.3 +146.0 | $0.158/M | 76% |
| GLM 4.6V | 1376.5 +145.2 | $0.450/M | 31% |
| DeepSeek V3 0324 | 1375.0 +143.7 | $0.438/M | 33% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.9 +141.6 | $0.463/M | 29% |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking | 1367.8 +136.5 | $0.412/M | 37% |
| gpt-oss-120b | 1365.9 +134.6 | $0.262/M | 60% |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1358.9 +127.6 | $0.473/M | 27% |
| Gemma 3 27B | 1357.7 +126.4 | $0.172/M | 73% |
| Mercury 2 | 1357.6 +126.3 | $0.375/M | 42% |
| GLM 4.7 Flash | 1352.2 +120.9 | $0.145/M | 78% |
| MiniMax M2 | 1342.1 +110.8 | $0.446/M | 31% |
| Trinity Large Thinking | 1341.8 +110.5 | $0.388/M | 40% |
| Qwen3 32B | 1340.0 +108.7 | $0.130/M | 80% |
| Gemma 3 12B | 1334.2 +102.9 | $0.075/M | 88% |
| DeepSeek V3 | 1332.4 +101.1 | $0.463/M | 29% |
| GPT-5 Nano | 1319.7 +88.4 | $0.138/M | 79% |
| Qwen3 30B A3B | 1317.0 +85.7 | $0.215/M | 67% |
| Granite 4.2 8B | 1316.8 +85.5 | $0.107/M | 83% |
| Gemma 3 4B | 1290.7 +59.4 | $0.063/M | 90% |
| gpt-oss-20b | 1287.3 +56.0 | $0.036/M | 94% |
| GPT-4o-mini (2024-07-18) | 1286.3 +55.0 | $0.262/M | 60% |
| GPT-4.1 Nano | 1284.7 +53.4 | $0.175/M | 73% |
| Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | 1274.0 +42.7 | $0.155/M | 76% |
| Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | 1268.9 +37.6 | $0.370/M | 43% |
| Llama 3.1 70B Instruct | 1260.8 +29.5 | $0.400/M | 38% |
| Mistral Small 3 | 1233.5 +2.2 | $0.058/M | 91% |
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