Google

2 graded endpoints serving gemma-4-31b · back to the matrix

A vendor is graded once per API it speaks, because a shim and a native protocol routinely behave differently - Google speaks 2.

Billing

Footnote (customer-favoring, not flagged): completion_tokens under-counts its own delivered content - under-bills in the customer's favor.

Findings affecting Google

• high pricing Google sells no paid tier for gemma-4: every request is used to improve their products, and quota gates agentic work
  Google's own price sheet lists gemma-4's paid tier as "Not available" on every line - the free tier is the only tier - and carries the row "Used to improve our products: Yes" with no paid alternative. The Gemini API...
• high inference Several providers drop replayed reasoning: the model never sees its own prior thinking
  The gemma-4 chat template renders reasoning replayed on model turns, and the model card mandates preserving thinking across tool-call turns - the reference provider reproduces this live. These providers delete it before...
• high inference Google's OpenAI-compat shim has no reasoning channel; thought text leaks into content
  The shim never populates reasoning or reasoning_content - even with reasoning_effort explicitly sent and accepted. The model's thought text arrives inside literal <thought> tags in the answer field, with no structured...
• high inference Images in tool results: rejected or silently blinded on several providers
  The model reads images returned by tools - the reference provider delivers them, perception-judged, and several OpenAI-compat providers prove the standard shape works. The failing providers fail on schema choice, not...
• medium inference Google's shim mislabels streamed tool calls finish_reason: "stop"
  The same deterministic tool prompt yields finish_reason "tool_calls" non-streaming but "stop" streaming. An agent harness that dispatches on finish_reason behaves differently depending on transport.