Last refreshed 2026-05-11. Next refresh: weekly.
Why use Gemma 2B Instruct on GCP Vertex AI?
GCP Vertex AI offers Gemma 2B Instruct with pay-as-you-go pricing at $0.04/1M input tokens. Vertex AI is Google Cloud's managed AI platform, offering access to Gemini models and hundreds of partner models alongside tools for fine-tuning, grounding, vector search, and end-to-end MLOps pipelines.
Compare Gemma 2B Instruct across 7 providers to find the best fit for your use caseSetup recipe
Python + curlpip install google-cloud-aiplatformexport GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=...import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")gemma-2b-itRequest example
import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel
# Reads GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT from env; authenticates via Application Default Credentials
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")
model = GenerativeModel("gemma-2b-it")
response = model.generate_content("Hello")
print(response.text)Gotchas
- For Google-published models use the model name directly, e.g. "gemini-2.0-flash-001". For third-party publishers (Anthropic, Meta, etc.) use the full publisher path, e.g. "publishers/anthropic/models/claude-3-5-sonnet-v2@20241022".
- The examples expect GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT; rename it only if your application config maps the new variable.
Compare Gemma 2B Instruct Across Providers
| Provider | Input (per 1M) | Output (per 1M) |
|---|---|---|
| Together AI | $0.10 | $0.10 |
| GCP Vertex AI | $0.04 | $0.12 |
| Cloudflare Workers AI | — | — |
| NVIDIA NIM | — | — |
| Alibaba Cloud PAI-EAS | — | — |
Pricing
| Type | Price (per 1M) |
|---|---|
| Input tokens | $0.04 |
| Output tokens | $0.12 |
Capabilities
About Gemma 2B Instruct
Gemma 2B Instruct is a large language model developed by Google, designed to balance performance and accessibility with its 2 billion parameters. Derived from the Gemini family, it excels in tasks such as text generation, code interpretation, and mathematical problem-solving. Built on a transformer decoder architecture, it features multi-query attention, RoPE, GeGLU activations, and RMSNorm. Trained on approximately 6 trillion tokens, including web documents, code, and mathematical content, it uses SFT and RLHF for instruction-tuning. Notable for its lightweight design permitting deployment on consumer-grade hardware, it's open-source and optimized for dialogue applications. Despite its capabilities, limitations include potential biases, factual inaccuracies, and challenges with complex reasoning.
FAQ
What does Gemma 2B Instruct cost on GCP Vertex AI?
On GCP Vertex AI, Gemma 2B Instruct costs $0.04 per 1M input tokens and $0.12 per 1M output tokens.
What is the context window for Gemma 2B Instruct on GCP Vertex AI?
Gemma 2B Instruct supports a 2,000 token context window on GCP Vertex AI.
How does GCP Vertex AI compare to other Gemma 2B Instruct providers?
Gemma 2B Instruct is available from 7 providers. The cheapest input pricing is $0.04/1M tokens from GCP Vertex AI.
Who created Gemma 2B Instruct?
Gemma 2B Instruct was created by Google DeepMind as part of the Gemma model family.
Is Gemma 2B Instruct open source?
Gemma 2B Instruct is open source according to the seed data.