Is Gemma 3 27B a good deal?

As of Sep 23, 2026, Gemma 3 27B is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Gemma 4 26B A4B scores 76.8 higher and costs 17% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.

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Gemma 4 26B A4B is both better and cheaper than Gemma 3 27B: 76.8 points higher on LMArena and 17% less per million tokens, $0.03 cheaper at this mix.

Gemma 3 27B takes text, image, returns up to 117,964 tokens from a 131,072-token context, and is listed by 4 sellers.

Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 1 model dominates it and gives up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Gemma 3 27B scores 1357.7 at $0.17 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
Gemma 4 26B A4B	1434.5 +76.8	$0.143/M	17%

Higher score, lower price, named losses

Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.

Model	LMArena	Effective $/M	You give up
Gemma 4 31B	1441.7	$0.153/M	max output
Hy3	1440.6	$0.144/M	image
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423	1431.8	$0.103/M	image
Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507	1419.8	$0.153/M	image
Step 3.5 Flash	1403.7	$0.150/M	max output, image

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