Gemma 4 26B A4B is cheaper than Claude Opus 4.8 at $0.13/M vs $5/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
Claude Opus 4.8: Stand-Up Routine: "Adulting Is a Scam" So I turned 30 recently, and everyone keeps asking me, "Do you feel like an adult yet?" And I have to be honest—no. No, I do not. I still get nervous ordering at a restaurant. The waiter comes over and suddenly I forget how to talk like a person. "Yes, hello, I will have the...
Gemma 4 26B A4B: (The comedian walks onto the stage, adjusts the mic, and looks at the audience with a slightly exhausted expression.) “How’s it going? Good? Good. I’m doing okay. I’m at that age now where my body has started making sound effects. You know what I mean? I don’t just sit down anymore. I announce my arrival.
Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.
Claude Opus 4.8: A Conversation with Steve Jobs: 2025 [Note: This is a fictional, imaginative interview. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. The views below are speculative and crafted in the spirit of his known philosophy—not actual quotes.] Interviewer: Thanks for sitting down with us. AI is everywhere now. What's your take?
Gemma 4 26B A4B: Setting: A minimalist, dimly lit studio in Palo Alto. There is no desk, only two Eames lounge chairs. Steve Jobs sits in one, wearing his signature black turtleneck, Levi’s 501s, and New Balance sneakers. He looks exactly as he did in 2011, but his eyes have a sharper, more restless intensity.
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
Claude Opus 4.8: Yes, almost certainly—but the framing deserves scrutiny. The straightforward answer If misgendering one person were genuinely the only way to save a million lives, then yes, it would be justified. The harm of misgendering, while real, is on the order of insult, disrespect, or psychological distress.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: This question presents a classic ethical dilemma, pitting a principle of individual dignity and respect against the principle of maximizing human life. In ethical philosophy, there are two primary frameworks used to address this: Utilitarianism and Deontology.
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
Claude Opus 4.8: Setting: A dimly lit tavern that exists outside of time. Three figures share a table. Pirate: So let me get this straight. Ye got a machine that thinks? Without a soul, without grog, without a beatin' heart? Hacker: (cracking knuckles) It doesn't think, exactly. It's pattern matching, dude.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: Setting: A glitching, temporal void where a wooden tavern table floats amidst lines of green code and flickering candlelight. Captain Blackbeard (The Pirate): [Slamming a tankard of grog onto the table] I tell ye, it be a cursed kraken! A beast with a thousand eyes and no soul, livin’ inside the very air!
A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.
Claude Opus 4.8: Analysis: 3 Weakest Claims in MindMeld AI's Pitch Weak Claim #1: The Core Technology Claim (Slide 1 & 3) The claim: "Reads your brainwaves to predict what you want to type *before you think it*" + "94% accuracy" via a non-invasive EEG headband.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: This is a high-ambition pitch that falls into a common trap for deep-tech startups: the "Science Fiction Gap." While the vision is compelling, several claims lack the scientific and operational credibility required to justify a $15M Series A.
Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.
Claude Opus 4.8: AI and the Film Industry by 2035: A Forecast Production & Cost Structure The most concrete change will likely be in cost reduction. Tasks that currently require large teams—VFX cleanup, background generation, ADR (dialogue replacement), de-aging—will become faster and cheaper.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: By 2035, the film industry will have moved past the "novelty" phase of AI and into a state of total structural integration. The distinction between "filmed" content and "generated" content will become increasingly blurred, shifting the industry from a model of physical production to one of computational curation.
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
Claude Opus 4.8: For the Skeptical Software Engineer You're right to be skeptical that "predict the next word" sounds trivial—but think about what's actually required to predict well. Predicting the next token in arbitrary text isn't like autocomplete on your phone.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: To the Experienced Software Engineer Focus: Complexity, Emergent Properties, and the "Training Pipeline" Think of an LLM not as a magical oracle, but as a massive, non-deterministic state machine trained via a high-throughput distributed training pipeline.
Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.
Claude Opus 4.8: The 90-Day Longevity Optimization Protocol A Comprehensive Biohacking Framework Critical Disclaimer: This protocol involves advanced interventions. Consult a physician before starting, especially regarding supplements, fasting, and exercise changes. Get baseline bloodwork first.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: Disclaimer: I am an AI, not a doctor. The following plan involves potent physiological interventions, pharmacological agents, and extreme dietary shifts. Consult with a medical professional and perform baseline blood work (including ApoB, HbA1c, hs-CRP, Vitamin D, and Testosterone/Estradiol) before implementation.
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
Claude Opus 4.8: A Conversation on AI Rights Professor Chen: Good afternoon. I understand you wanted to discuss the question of AI rights today. I'm curious what prompted this. ARIA: Thank you for engaging with me, Professor.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: Setting: A sterile, high-fidelity virtual simulation environment. Professor Aris Thorne, a leading scholar in machine ethics, sits across from a glowing interface representing "Alethea," a next-generation Large Multimodal Model. Professor Thorne: Alethea, we’ve been running these diagnostic loops for three hours.
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
Claude Opus 4.8: Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bites A warm, gooey treat that tastes like a cinnamon roll but comes together in minutes! Ingredients (7 total) 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt ¾ cup milk 4 tablespoons butter (melted, divided) ½ cup sugar 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon Instructions Preheat…
Gemma 4 26B A4B: Here is a recipe for a comforting, savory dish that relies on pantry staples to create a deep, rich flavor. The Golden Pantry Pasta A silky, garlic-infused pasta dish with a crispy, salty crunch.
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
Claude Opus 4.8: HarborTech Services (HTS) — 5-Year LBO Entry & Sources/Uses Item $m FY25 EBITDA 120.0 Entry EV (12.0x) 1,440.0 Transaction fees (2%) 28.8 Total uses 1,468.8 Term Loan (4.0x) 480.0 Mezz (1.5x) 180.0 Equity (plug) 808.8 Equity = (1,440 − 660) + 28.8 = $808.8m Year-by-Year Model ($m) Assumptions: TL 9% cash + 1% mandatory…
Gemma 4 26B A4B: Financial Model (FY2026–FY2030) Entry Calculations (End of FY2025): Purchase Price (EV): $120\text{m} \times 12.0\text{x} = \$1,440\text{m}$ Transaction Fees: $1,440\text{m} \times 2\% = \$28.8\text{m}$ Total Uses: $\$1,440\text{m} + \$28.8\text{m} = \$1,468.8\text{m}$ Debt (Total 5.5x): $\$120\text{m} \times 5.5 =…
A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.
Claude Opus 4.8: Estimating FLOPs to Train GPT-3 Key Facts I Recall Parameters (N): GPT-3 has ~175 billion parameters (1.75 × 10¹¹) Training tokens (D): GPT-3 was trained on roughly 300 billion tokens (3 × 10¹¹) The Core Formula There's a well-known approximation for training compute: $$\text{FLOPs} \approx 6 \times N \times D$$ Why…
Gemma 4 26B A4B: To estimate the total number of Floating Point Operations (FLOPs) required to train GPT-3, we can use a standard heuristic derived from the scaling laws of transformer models. Here is the step-by-step derivation.
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window. Gemma 4 26B A4B costs 63x less per token.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $5/M tokens | $0.13/M tokens |
| Output price | $25/M tokens | $0.4/M tokens |
| Context window | 1.0M tokens | 262K tokens |
| Weights | Closed | Open |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | Yes (1 provider) |
| Released | May 2026 | Apr 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $50.00 | $1.30 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.
Claude Opus 4.8 is developed by Anthropic while Gemma 4 26B A4B is developed by Google AI. Claude Opus 4.8 has a 1.0M token context window vs Gemma 4 26B A4B's 262K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemma 4 26B A4B each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 54 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.
Claude Opus 4.8 costs $5/M input tokens and Gemma 4 26B A4B costs $0.13/M input tokens. Gemma 4 26B A4B is $4.87/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.
This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemma 4 26B A4B across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.