Pick Atria Dawn Preview for best-in-class among tested models on several of shanghai ai lab's own benchmarks, including browsecomp (92.5, ahead of gpt-5.6 sol's 92.2) and deepsearchqa (96.0) or 744b-parameter moe built on a glm-5.2 base, released under a fully open mit license. Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B for fast, cheap inference from a sparse moe (3.8b active of 25.2b total) or near-31b-dense quality at a fraction of the compute and memory-bandwidth cost. On a tight budget at scale, Atria Dawn Preview is the value pick.
Atria Dawn Preview (Shanghai AI Laboratory, China) and Gemma 4 26B A4B (Google, US) line up two different AI ecosystems against each other — a comparison that is as much about cost philosophy and openness as raw capability. Atria Dawn Preview is a free, MIT-licensed 744B open-weight model from Shanghai AI Lab that beat GPT-5.6 Sol on the BrowseComp benchmark — released quietly, weights before paper. Gemma 4 26B A4B is an Apache-2.0 open MoE with 25.2B total but only 3.8B active parameters, delivering near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the inference cost. Their biggest split is price, and the breakdown below shows exactly how that plays out for your workload.
Key differences
Context window: both advertise 256K tokens (~393 pages). Tie on paper — test on your own long inputs, since usable recall varies by model.
Recency: Atria Dawn Preview is the newer model by about 5 months (released September 11, 2026), usually meaning fresher training data and capabilities.
Ecosystem: this is a China-vs-US matchup — they differ in pricing philosophy, data-residency options, and tooling ecosystems, not only benchmarks.
Specifications
Spec
Atria Dawn Preview
Gemma 4 26B A4B
Provider
Shanghai AI Laboratory (China)
Google (US)
Released
September 11, 2026
April 2, 2026
Context window
256K tokens (~393 pages)
256K (~393 pages)
Price (in/out)
Open weight (self-host / free)
$0.12/$0.37 per 1M tokens
Open weight?
Yes — self-hostable
Yes — self-hostable
Modalities
text
text, image, video, code
SWE-Bench Verified
Not published
Not published
MRCR v2 @ 1M
Not published
Not published
Who wins what
Best-in-class among tested models on several of Shanghai AI Lab's own benchmarks, including BrowseComp (92.5, ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol's 92.2) and DeepSearchQA (96.0): Atria Dawn Preview — A free, MIT-licensed 744B open-weight model from Shanghai AI Lab that beat GPT-5.6 Sol on the BrowseComp benchmark — released quietly, weights before paper — and it is the newer of the two.
744B-parameter MoE built on a GLM-5.2 base, released under a fully open MIT license: Atria Dawn Preview — Gemma 4 26B A4B is comparatively weak here — all 25.2B parameters must be loaded into memory even though only 3.8B are active per token
Free to self-host — no API pricing, run entirely on your own hardware: Atria Dawn Preview — Atria Dawn Preview lists free to self-host — no API pricing, run entirely on your own hardware among its strengths; Gemma 4 26B A4B does not.
Fast, cheap inference from a sparse MoE (3.8B active of 25.2B total): Gemma 4 26B A4B — Gemma 4 26B A4B lists fast, cheap inference from a sparse MoE (3.8B active of 25.2B total) among its strengths; Atria Dawn Preview does not.
Near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the compute and memory-bandwidth cost: Gemma 4 26B A4B — Gemma 4 26B A4B lists near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the compute and memory-bandwidth cost among its strengths; Atria Dawn Preview does not.
Strong reasoning and coding (88.3% AIME 2026 no-tools, 77.1% LiveCodeBench v6): Gemma 4 26B A4B — Gemma 4 26B A4B lists strong reasoning and coding (88.3% AIME 2026 no-tools, 77.1% LiveCodeBench v6) among its strengths; Atria Dawn Preview does not.
Lowest cost at scale: Atria Dawn Preview — Its weights are open, so at volume you pay for your own hardware instead of Gemma 4 26B A4B's $0.12/$0.37 per 1M tokens.
Which should you pick?
A cost-sensitive startup shipping high volume: Atria Dawn Preview — At Open weight (self-host / free) it undercuts Gemma 4 26B A4B, and on millions of tokens that margin decides the monthly bill.
Anyone whose priority is best-in-class among tested models on several of shanghai ai lab's own benchmarks, including browsecomp (92.5, ahead of gpt-5.6 sol's 92.2) and deepsearchqa (96.0): Atria Dawn Preview — It is specifically built for that.
Anyone whose priority is fast, cheap inference from a sparse moe (3.8b active of 25.2b total): Gemma 4 26B A4B — That is its strongest area.
An enterprise with regional data-residency rules: Gemma 4 26B A4B or Atria Dawn Preview — Origin (China vs US) affects where data is processed and which compliance regime applies — check the provider's terms for your region.
Atria Dawn Preview: where it fits
A free, MIT-licensed 744B open-weight model from Shanghai AI Lab that beat GPT-5.6 Sol on the BrowseComp benchmark — released quietly, weights before paper. Released September 11, 2026 by Shanghai AI Laboratory, it is built for best-in-class among tested models on several of Shanghai AI Lab's own benchmarks, including BrowseComp (92.5, ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol's 92.2) and DeepSearchQA (96.0), 744B-parameter MoE built on a GLM-5.2 base, released under a fully open MIT license, and free to self-host — no API pricing, run entirely on your own hardware.
Its trade-offs are real: context window is reported inconsistently across trackers — most list 256K tokens, at least one lists 1M; unconfirmed which is accurate, released quietly, with weights and an API posted to GitHub before Shanghai AI Lab's own technical report went up on arXiv days later, and a lab research preview rather than a commercial product — support and update cadence are unclear. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: where it fits
An Apache-2.0 open MoE with 25.2B total but only 3.8B active parameters, delivering near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the inference cost. Released April 2, 2026 by Google, it is built for fast, cheap inference from a sparse MoE (3.8B active of 25.2B total), near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the compute and memory-bandwidth cost, strong reasoning and coding (88.3% AIME 2026 no-tools, 77.1% LiveCodeBench v6), and multimodal input (text/image, plus video processed as frames up to 60s) with native function calling.
Its trade-offs: all 25.2B parameters must be loaded into memory even though only 3.8B are active per token, and 256K context trails 1M-token frontier rivals, and this variant has no audio input (audio is E2B/E4B/12B only). At $0.12 in / $0.37 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.
The bottom line for this matchup
This is less "which is smarter" and more "which ecosystem fits." Atria Dawn Preview (China) and Gemma 4 26B A4B (US) differ on pricing philosophy, data-residency, and tooling as much as on raw scores. Atria Dawn Preview is the cheaper option, which matters at volume. The pragmatic move is to run one real task through both and judge the outputs against your own constraints — including where your data is allowed to be processed.
Frequently asked questions
Is Atria Dawn Preview or Gemma 4 26B A4B better for coding?
Public SWE-Bench figures are not available for either model, so the honest test is your own repository — run an identical real bug through both. By design, Atria Dawn Preview leans toward best-in-class among tested models on several of shanghai ai lab's own benchmarks, including browsecomp (92.5, ahead of gpt-5.6 sol's 92.2) and deepsearchqa (96.0) while Gemma 4 26B A4B leans toward fast, cheap inference from a sparse moe (3.8b active of 25.2b total), and that positioning usually predicts which feels better on your codebase.
Which is cheaper, Atria Dawn Preview or Gemma 4 26B A4B?
Atria Dawn Preview is cheaper — Open weight (self-host / free) vs $0.12/$0.37 per 1M tokens.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both advertise 256K tokens (~393 pages). Remember advertised ≠ usable: recall typically degrades before the ceiling.
Can I use both Atria Dawn Preview and Gemma 4 26B A4B together?
Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you Atria Dawn Preview, Gemma 4 26B A4B and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.
Which is newer, Atria Dawn Preview or Gemma 4 26B A4B?
Atria Dawn Preview — released September 11, 2026, about 5 months after Gemma 4 26B A4B.
Atria Dawn Preview vs Gemma 4 26B A4B
Shanghai AI Laboratory · China | Google · US · Updated June 2026
Quick verdict
Pick Atria Dawn Preview for best-in-class among tested models on several of shanghai ai lab's own benchmarks, including browsecomp (92.5, ahead of gpt-5.6 sol's 92.2) and deepsearchqa (96.0) or 744b-parameter moe built on a glm-5.2 base, released under a fully open mit license. Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B for fast, cheap inference from a sparse moe (3.8b active of 25.2b total) or near-31b-dense quality at a fraction of the compute and memory-bandwidth cost. On a tight budget at scale, Atria Dawn Preview is the value pick.
Atria Dawn Preview (Shanghai AI Laboratory, China) and Gemma 4 26B A4B (Google, US) line up two different AI ecosystems against each other — a comparison that is as much about cost philosophy and openness as raw capability. Atria Dawn Preview is a free, MIT-licensed 744B open-weight model from Shanghai AI Lab that beat GPT-5.6 Sol on the BrowseComp benchmark — released quietly, weights before paper. Gemma 4 26B A4B is an Apache-2.0 open MoE with 25.2B total but only 3.8B active parameters, delivering near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the inference cost. Their biggest split is price, and the breakdown below shows exactly how that plays out for your workload.
Key differences at a glance
▸Context window: both advertise 256K tokens (~393 pages). Tie on paper — test on your own long inputs, since usable recall varies by model.
▸Recency: Atria Dawn Preview is the newer model by about 5 months (released September 11, 2026), usually meaning fresher training data and capabilities.
▸Ecosystem: this is a China-vs-US matchup — they differ in pricing philosophy, data-residency options, and tooling ecosystems, not only benchmarks.
Side-by-side specs
Spec
Atria Dawn Preview
Gemma 4 26B A4B
Provider
Shanghai AI Laboratory (China)
Google (US)
Released
September 11, 2026
April 2, 2026
Context window
256K tokens (~393 pages)
256K (~393 pages)
Price (in/out)
Open weight (self-host / free)
$0.12/$0.37 per 1M tokens
Open weight?
Yes — self-hostable
Yes — self-hostable
Modalities
text
text, image, video, code
SWE-Bench Verified
Not published
Not published
MRCR v2 @ 1M
Not published
Not published
Who wins what
Best-in-class among tested models on several of Shanghai AI Lab's own benchmarks, including BrowseComp (92.5, ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol's 92.2) and DeepSearchQA (96.0)
Atria Dawn Preview
A free, MIT-licensed 744B open-weight model from Shanghai AI Lab that beat GPT-5.6 Sol on the BrowseComp benchmark — released quietly, weights before paper — and it is the newer of the two.
744B-parameter MoE built on a GLM-5.2 base, released under a fully open MIT license
Atria Dawn Preview
Gemma 4 26B A4B is comparatively weak here — all 25.2B parameters must be loaded into memory even though only 3.8B are active per token
Free to self-host — no API pricing, run entirely on your own hardware
Atria Dawn Preview
Atria Dawn Preview lists free to self-host — no API pricing, run entirely on your own hardware among its strengths; Gemma 4 26B A4B does not.
Fast, cheap inference from a sparse MoE (3.8B active of 25.2B total)
Gemma 4 26B A4B
Gemma 4 26B A4B lists fast, cheap inference from a sparse MoE (3.8B active of 25.2B total) among its strengths; Atria Dawn Preview does not.
Near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the compute and memory-bandwidth cost
Gemma 4 26B A4B
Gemma 4 26B A4B lists near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the compute and memory-bandwidth cost among its strengths; Atria Dawn Preview does not.
Gemma 4 26B A4B lists strong reasoning and coding (88.3% AIME 2026 no-tools, 77.1% LiveCodeBench v6) among its strengths; Atria Dawn Preview does not.
Lowest cost at scale
Atria Dawn Preview
Its weights are open, so at volume you pay for your own hardware instead of Gemma 4 26B A4B's $0.12/$0.37 per 1M tokens.
Which should you pick?
A cost-sensitive startup shipping high volume
→ Atria Dawn Preview
At Open weight (self-host / free) it undercuts Gemma 4 26B A4B, and on millions of tokens that margin decides the monthly bill.
Anyone whose priority is best-in-class among tested models on several of shanghai ai lab's own benchmarks, including browsecomp (92.5, ahead of gpt-5.6 sol's 92.2) and deepsearchqa (96.0)
→ Atria Dawn Preview
It is specifically built for that.
Anyone whose priority is fast, cheap inference from a sparse moe (3.8b active of 25.2b total)
→ Gemma 4 26B A4B
That is its strongest area.
An enterprise with regional data-residency rules
→ Gemma 4 26B A4B or Atria Dawn Preview
Origin (China vs US) affects where data is processed and which compliance regime applies — check the provider's terms for your region.
Atria Dawn Preview: where it fits
A free, MIT-licensed 744B open-weight model from Shanghai AI Lab that beat GPT-5.6 Sol on the BrowseComp benchmark — released quietly, weights before paper. Released September 11, 2026 by Shanghai AI Laboratory, it is built for best-in-class among tested models on several of Shanghai AI Lab's own benchmarks, including BrowseComp (92.5, ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol's 92.2) and DeepSearchQA (96.0), 744B-parameter MoE built on a GLM-5.2 base, released under a fully open MIT license, and free to self-host — no API pricing, run entirely on your own hardware.
Its trade-offs are real: context window is reported inconsistently across trackers — most list 256K tokens, at least one lists 1M; unconfirmed which is accurate, released quietly, with weights and an API posted to GitHub before Shanghai AI Lab's own technical report went up on arXiv days later, and a lab research preview rather than a commercial product — support and update cadence are unclear. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.
Gemma 4 26B A4B: where it fits
An Apache-2.0 open MoE with 25.2B total but only 3.8B active parameters, delivering near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the inference cost. Released April 2, 2026 by Google, it is built for fast, cheap inference from a sparse MoE (3.8B active of 25.2B total), near-31B-dense quality at a fraction of the compute and memory-bandwidth cost, strong reasoning and coding (88.3% AIME 2026 no-tools, 77.1% LiveCodeBench v6), and multimodal input (text/image, plus video processed as frames up to 60s) with native function calling.
Its trade-offs: all 25.2B parameters must be loaded into memory even though only 3.8B are active per token, and 256K context trails 1M-token frontier rivals, and this variant has no audio input (audio is E2B/E4B/12B only). At $0.12 in / $0.37 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.
The bottom line for this matchup
This is less "which is smarter" and more "which ecosystem fits." Atria Dawn Preview (China) and Gemma 4 26B A4B (US) differ on pricing philosophy, data-residency, and tooling as much as on raw scores. Atria Dawn Preview is the cheaper option, which matters at volume. The pragmatic move is to run one real task through both and judge the outputs against your own constraints — including where your data is allowed to be processed.
Want both Atria Dawn Preview and Gemma 4 26B A4B without two subscriptions? LumiChats gives you these plus 40+ models under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day) — draft with one, cross-check with the other.
Is Atria Dawn Preview or Gemma 4 26B A4B better for coding?
Public SWE-Bench figures are not available for either model, so the honest test is your own repository — run an identical real bug through both. By design, Atria Dawn Preview leans toward best-in-class among tested models on several of shanghai ai lab's own benchmarks, including browsecomp (92.5, ahead of gpt-5.6 sol's 92.2) and deepsearchqa (96.0) while Gemma 4 26B A4B leans toward fast, cheap inference from a sparse moe (3.8b active of 25.2b total), and that positioning usually predicts which feels better on your codebase.
Which is cheaper, Atria Dawn Preview or Gemma 4 26B A4B?
Atria Dawn Preview is cheaper — Open weight (self-host / free) vs $0.12/$0.37 per 1M tokens.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both advertise 256K tokens (~393 pages). Remember advertised ≠ usable: recall typically degrades before the ceiling.
Can I use both Atria Dawn Preview and Gemma 4 26B A4B together?
Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you Atria Dawn Preview, Gemma 4 26B A4B and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.
Which is newer, Atria Dawn Preview or Gemma 4 26B A4B?
Atria Dawn Preview — released September 11, 2026, about 5 months after Gemma 4 26B A4B.
Specifications and benchmarks reflect publicly reported figures as of June 2026 and may change as providers release updates. Always verify on your own workload.