Gemma 3
Gemma 3 is worth evaluating for classification and json / tool use when its provider route and context window match the workload.
Use it for
- Teams evaluating classification and json / tool use
- Buyers comparing 3 tracked provider routes
Do not use it for
- Vision or document-understanding workloads
Cheapest of 3 routes · GCP Vertex AI
About
Lightweight, state-of-the-art open model built from the same technology that powers Gemini models. Available for free local deployment via Hugging Face and other hosting providers.
Gemma 3 is an open-weight model. The structured metadata tracks structured outputs. This page tracks provider routes through OpenRouter, Google AI Studio, and GCP Vertex AI, with the cheapest tracked route listed at free input and free output per 1M tokens. No headline benchmark score is tracked for Gemma 3 yet.
Top use-case fit
Classification
Included by capability and metadata signals in the decision map.
JSON / Tool use
Included by capability and metadata signals in the decision map.
Provider price ladder
Compare all 3Compare API pricing across 3 providers for input and output tokens, batch, and cached reads when available.
| Provider | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Route |
|---|---|---|---|
| GCP Vertex AI | Free | Free | Serverless |
| Google AI Studio | Free | Free | Serverless |
| OpenRouter | $0.040 | $0.080 | Serverless |
Available via routers & gateways(13)
AIRouter
RouterCommercial LLM router that analyzes incoming requests and routes to the optimal model for cost/quality/latency via a drop-in OpenAI-compatible API, with a privacy-preserving embedding mode that avoids sending prompt content.
Helicone
GatewayObservability-first AI gateway with routing, caching, rate limiting, and request tracing; Apache 2.0 open-source core with a managed hosted tier for logging and analytics.
Kong AI Gateway
GatewayMulti-LLM AI gateway built on Kong Gateway 3.x, adding semantic routing, load balancing, guardrails, and MCP traffic analytics as plugins over Kong's existing API management platform.
LiteLLM
GatewayOpen-source Python SDK and proxy server that unifies 100+ LLM APIs behind a single OpenAI-compatible interface, with load balancing, cost tracking, and configurable failover.
Martian
RouterAI-powered LLM router that analyzes each prompt in real-time to select the optimal model, targeting 20–97% cost reduction while maintaining quality; San Francisco startup reportedly nearing $1.3B valuation.
Neutrino AI
RouterCommercial LLM router that dynamically routes each query to the best-suited model with load balancing and fallback handling, charging 3% of underlying AI spend.
Capabilities
Benchmark peer barsfor Classification
No task-mapped benchmark peers are available for this model yet.
Migration checks
No linked migration route is available for this model yet.
Rankings & picks(1)
Cheapest of 3 routes · GCP Vertex AI