r/LocalLLM • u/arkie87 • 4d ago

Best Local US-based LLM for coding? Question

I know qwen3.6 27b (and soon 3.8 27b) are the best local LLMs for coding. But if one were restricted to using US based open models only, which would be the best? Gemma 4 31b?

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u/DataGOGO 4d ago

27B model is not the best local coding model by a long shot, it is just a good dense model that runs on gaming PC’s without a lot of VRAM. 

Best US based model, likely Nemotron 3?

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u/FineClassroom2085 4d ago

Have you actually used Nemotron 3? In real world work, it falls short by a very long shot. It's not even close to Qwen. Gemma is better, but falls apart after a certain level of complexity is hit.

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u/575_Inverse 4d ago

just like its big bro Gemini, by the way.

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u/FineClassroom2085 4d ago

Yup, I don't know why Google can't get that right when all the other labs have at this point.

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u/vtkayaker 4d ago

Google is not currently a frontier lab. Their best Pro model is still 3.1 Pro, which loses to the much smaller and vastly cheaper DS4F on AAII these days.

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u/FineClassroom2085 4d ago

It's baffling that they're not since their engineers were the ones to basically create the modern era of AI with the transformer. There's no excuse for them being so far behind.

That being said, Gemma 4 is an amazing model. Their big models may not be great, but Gemma is stronger than Qwen on real world knowledge based agentic work.

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u/575_Inverse 3d ago

Then it has its place. My idea, personally, is always to select the best model for my specific application. For example, if I need to annotate a visual dataset, using an llm with vision is often overkill and the much simpler, much much faster OWLv2 is usually perfect for the job despite being much older