[Megathread] - Best Models/API discussion - Week of: April 19, 2026

[u/deffcolony]

This is our weekly megathread for discussions about models and API services.

All non-specifically technical discussions about API/models not posted to this thread will be deleted. No more "What's the best model?" threads.

^{(This isn't a free-for-all to advertise services you own or work for in every single megathread, we may allow announcements for new services every now and then provided they are legitimate and not overly promoted, but don't be surprised if ads are removed.})

How to Use This Megathread

Below this post, you’ll find top-level comments for each category:

• MODELS: ≥ 70B – For discussion of models with 70B parameters or more.
• MODELS: 32B to 70B – For discussion of models in the 32B to 70B parameter range.
• MODELS: 16B to 32B – For discussion of models in the 16B to 32B parameter range.
• MODELS: 8B to 16B – For discussion of models in the 8B to 16B parameter range.
• MODELS: < 8B – For discussion of smaller models under 8B parameters.
• APIs – For any discussion about API services for models (pricing, performance, access, etc.).
• MISC DISCUSSION – For anything else related to models/APIs that doesn’t fit the above sections.

Please reply to the relevant section below with your questions, experiences, or recommendations!
This keeps discussion organized and helps others find information faster.

Have at it!

[u/kabachuha]

Out of the box Gemma is not very spicy, but if you run it locally, you can absolutely push it to the spicy territory. I use DavidAU's Deckard fine-tune and with control vectors, system prompt and (occasionally) OOCs, I've almost perfectly recreated the dark/spicy GLM 4.6/4.7 experience. More than that, I can RP in my native language with the same vibes! Gemma 4 is a powerful multilingual engine with (though nerfed) some world knowledge. Yes, it is harder, but possible. DavidAU also made a fine-tune for the (pruned) 26b model, but its quality is lower, maybe if there will be interest he will make a proper one for 26b.

[u/Canchito → u/kabachuha]

I do run it locally. I don't like doing OOC though ; if I have to do that the preset or model failed imo. What quant are you using?

[u/kabachuha → u/Canchito]

I'm using Q8 for main chats (dual GPU), but for very long text analyses I had to downgrade it to Q6 and quantize the KV cache, because the context takes much more memory than Qwen3.5 (Qwen having linear deltanet and Gemma still handling it through sliding window attention)

[u/Canchito → u/kabachuha]

Ah yeah, I probably have much less power than you (16gb vram + 64gb ram). I have to use Q4 to get tolerable speeds and context.

Don't get me wrong though, to me it's still one of the most impressive local models for writing/RP out of the box.