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, AutoModelForImageTextToText

processor = AutoProcessor.from_pretrained("google/gemma-3-4b-it")
model = AutoModelForImageTextToText.from_pretrained("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?"}
        ]
    },
]
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
Notebooks
Google Colab
Kaggle
Local Apps

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
```

Parameters are contradictory use_cache=False

#66

by lemon0703 - opened Aug 28, 2025

Discussion

lemon0703

Aug 28, 2025

No matter how you set the use_cache parameter, an error occurs.
(TypeError: Gemma3ForConditionalGeneration.init() got an unexpected keyword argument 'use_cache')
use_cache=True is incompatible with gradient checkpointing. Setting use_cache=False.
why?

BalakrishnaCh

Google org Sep 1, 2025

Hi @lemon0703 ,

Thanks for reaching out to us, the following are the only valid parameters for the from_pretrained method with their default values from Gemma3ForConditionalGeneration class:

def from_pretrained(
cls: type[SpecificPreTrainedModelType],
pretrained_model_name_or_path: Optional[Union[str, os.PathLike]],
*model_args,
config: Optional[Union[PretrainedConfig, str, os.PathLike]] = None,
cache_dir: Optional[Union[str, os.PathLike]] = None,
ignore_mismatched_sizes: bool = False,
force_download: bool = False,
local_files_only: bool = False,
token: Optional[Union[str, bool]] = None,
revision: str = "main",
use_safetensors: Optional[bool] = None,
weights_only: bool = True,
**kwargs,
)

Thanks.

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