Google vs Meta in the small model arena. Gemma 2 offers research-grade quality while Llama 3.2 brings Meta's scale and community support.
Quality
🏆 Gemma 2 9BGemma 2 9B significantly outperforms Llama 3.2 3B thanks to its 3x parameter count and knowledge distillation.
Resource Usage
🏆 Llama 3.2 3BLlama 3.2 3B runs on 3GB VRAM, while Gemma 2 9B needs 7GB+.
Community & Ecosystem
🏆 Llama 3.2 3BMeta's Llama has a larger community, more fine-tunes, and broader tool support.
Context Length
🏆 Llama 3.2 3BLlama 3.2 supports 128K context vs Gemma 2's 8K — a significant advantage for long documents.
License
🏆 Llama 3.2 3BLlama 3.2 Community license is more permissive than Gemma's license for commercial use.
🎯 Which Should You Choose?
Compare at the same size: Gemma 2 9B vs Llama 3.2 3B isn't quite fair. Gemma 2 wins on quality but needs more resources. If you're choosing a small model: pick Llama 3.2 3B for edge/mobile, Gemma 2 9B for quality on modest hardware. Both are excellent choices.