Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs ShieldGemma 9B
Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control (2025) and ShieldGemma 9B (2024) are compact production models from NVIDIA AI and Google DeepMind. Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control ships a 4k-token context window, while ShieldGemma 9B ships a 8k-token context window. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control is safer overall; choose ShieldGemma 9B when long-context analysis matters.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control | ShieldGemma 9B |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | general production evaluation | general production evaluation |
| Decision fit | Classification | Classification |
| Context window | 4k | 8k |
| Cheapest output | - | - |
| Provider routes | 1 tracked | 1 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 0 shared | 0 shared |
Decision tradeoffs
- Local decision data tags Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control for Classification.
- ShieldGemma 9B has the larger context window for long prompts, retrieval packs, or transcript analysis.
- Local decision data tags ShieldGemma 9B for Classification.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control
Unavailable
No complete token price in local provider data
ShieldGemma 9B
Unavailable
No complete token price in local provider data
Cost delta unavailable until both models have sourced input and output token prices.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on NVIDIA NIM; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Provider overlap exists on NVIDIA NIM; start route-level A/B tests there.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2025-01-01 | 2024-07-01 |
| Context window | 4k | 8k |
| Parameters | 8B | 9B |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Decoder Only |
| License | Open Weights | Gemma |
| Openness | Open weights | Open weights |
| Weights | Unknown | Unknown |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | - | Commercial use: conditional |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control | ShieldGemma 9B |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | - | - |
| Output price | - | - |
| Providers |
Pricing not yet sourced for either model.
Capabilities
| Capability | Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control | ShieldGemma 9B |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | No | No |
| Multimodal | No | No |
| Reasoning | No | No |
| JSON / Tool use | No | No |
| Structured outputs | No | No |
| Code execution | No | No |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | No | No |
| Parallel agents | No | No |
Benchmarks
No shared benchmark scores are currently available for this pair.
Continue comparing
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Popular comparisons for ShieldGemma 9B
Last reviewed: 2026-05-19. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.