Instructions to use google/gemma-3-4b-it with libraries, inference providers, notebooks, and local apps. Follow these links to get started.

Libraries

How to use google/gemma-3-4b-it with Transformers:

# Use a pipeline as a high-level helper
from transformers import pipeline

pipe = pipeline("image-text-to-text", model="google/gemma-3-4b-it")
messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    },
]
pipe(text=messages)

# Load model directly
from transformers import AutoProcessor, AutoModelForMultimodalLM

processor = AutoProcessor.from_pretrained("google/gemma-3-4b-it")
model = AutoModelForMultimodalLM.from_pretrained("google/gemma-3-4b-it", device_map="auto")
messages = [
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    },
]
inputs = processor.apply_chat_template(
	messages,
	add_generation_prompt=True,
	tokenize=True,
	return_dict=True,
	return_tensors="pt",
).to(model.device)

outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=40)
print(processor.decode(outputs[0][inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1]:]))

Inference
HuggingChat
Notebooks
Google Colab
Kaggle
AMD Developer Cloud
Local Apps Settings

vLLM

How to use google/gemma-3-4b-it with vLLM:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install vLLM from pip:
pip install vllm
# Start the vLLM server:
vllm serve "google/gemma-3-4b-it"
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "google/gemma-3-4b-it",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker

docker model run hf.co/google/gemma-3-4b-it

SGLang

How to use google/gemma-3-4b-it with SGLang:

Install from pip and serve model

# Install SGLang from pip:
pip install sglang
# Start the SGLang server:
python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
    --model-path "google/gemma-3-4b-it" \
    --host 0.0.0.0 \
    --port 30000
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "google/gemma-3-4b-it",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Use Docker images

docker run --gpus all \
    --shm-size 32g \
    -p 30000:30000 \
    -v ~/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \
    --env "HF_TOKEN=<secret>" \
    --ipc=host \
    lmsysorg/sglang:latest \
    python3 -m sglang.launch_server \
        --model-path "google/gemma-3-4b-it" \
        --host 0.0.0.0 \
        --port 30000
# Call the server using curl (OpenAI-compatible API):
curl -X POST "http://localhost:30000/v1/chat/completions" \
	-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
	--data '{
		"model": "google/gemma-3-4b-it",
		"messages": [
			{
				"role": "user",
				"content": [
					{
						"type": "text",
						"text": "Describe this image in one sentence."
					},
					{
						"type": "image_url",
						"image_url": {
							"url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/61/93061-050-99147DCE/Statue-of-Liberty-Island-New-York-Bay.jpg"
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}'

Docker Model Runner
How to use google/gemma-3-4b-it with Docker Model Runner:
```
docker model run hf.co/google/gemma-3-4b-it
```

The checkpoint you are trying to load has model type `gemma3` but Transformers does not recognize this architecture.

#19

by bedoonraj - opened Mar 14, 2025

Discussion

bedoonraj

Mar 14, 2025

i'm getting below error when i'm try to use gemma-3 4b model.

raise ValueError(
ValueError: The checkpoint you are trying to load has model type gemma3 but Transformers does not recognize this architecture. This could be because of an issue with the checkpoint, or because your version of Transformers is out of date.

You can update Transformers with the command pip install --upgrade transformers. If this does not work, and the checkpoint is very new, then there may not be a release version that supports this model yet. In this case, you can get the most up-to-date code by installing Transformers from source with the command pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git

lkv

Google org Mar 15, 2025

Hi @bedoonraj , yes your are corerct, thanks for your suggestion, To use Gemma-3 models, we need the latest development version of the Transformers library (4.50.0.dev0). we can install it directly from the GitHub branch using: pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers@v4.49.0-Gemma-3 as mentioned here.

Thank you.

Peter0225

Mar 16, 2025

This comment has been hidden

3eliran

Mar 16, 2025

Hey, what's is the command for conda users?

Renu11

Google org Mar 27, 2025

Hi @3eliran , A latest stable transformers version is available now which is compatible to Gemma3 models. You can install it using the command - pip install -U transformers.

AryanSuri42

Jul 27, 2025

Hey, what's is the command for conda users?

python -m pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git

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