Gemini Nano
Shares rank 9 of 11 small language models by recommenders
People like that it runs offline and privately inside Chrome with almost no setup, and that it is free. Critics say Chrome installs it without consent and that its answers are often poor.
People like that it runs offline and privately inside Chrome with almost no setup, and that it is free. Critics say Chrome installs it without consent and that its answers are often poor.
18 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 56%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Private and runs offline
“it’s private and considering it’s from google that is kinda impressive”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Google Chrome silently installs 4 GB Gemini Nano AI model without consent” “how the fk is a free offline ai model even a bad thing for privacy”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “Google Chrome Installed a 4GB AI Model on Your PC” Impressive for its size
“it's an astonishingly good model for this size and you can use it for all sorts of cool stuff”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “Google Chrome Installed a 4GB AI Model on Your PC” “that is the equivalent of a High School level intelligent brain”
Comment from 5 May 2026 in “Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Installed without consent or opt-out
“I didn't ask for this, I didn't make any choice for it to be installed, and I almost certainly won't ever use it.”
Comment from 5 May 2026 in “Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent” “the surprise extra 4GB download plus their attempt to expose it as a non-standard browser API”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing” “Chrome quietly downloads Gemini Nano without any opt-out except through group policy.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Mozilla's Opposition to Chrome's Prompt API” Output quality is poor
“used to work really well, but requires a few switches to be manually switched on, and has recently gotten worse in quality”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “Google releases Gemma 4 open models” “the results are so bad; factual errors and hallucinations make it useless”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Apple's slow AI pace becomes a strength as market grows weary of spending” “the standard case currently is pretty rough”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Gemma Gem – AI model embedded in a browser – no API keys, no cloud” Hosted or Gemma models do better
“the hosted model absolutely trashed the local model on every aspect of speed, reliability, availability”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “The Prompt API” “the latest Gemma4 E2B and E4B models appear to be much better”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “The Prompt API”
Other small language models people recommend
The four most recommended other small language models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku | 218 | 134 | 62% | 13 | 4 mo4 owners | — |
| OpenAI Luna | 218 | 56 | 80% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Apple Foundation Models | 45 | 35 | 56% | 11 | 1 yr4 owners | — |
| Ministral | 18 | 6 | 75% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Gemini NanoThis page | 10 | 8 | 56% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the surprise extra 4GB download plus their attempt to expose it as a non-standard browser API”
“how the fk is a free offline ai model even a bad thing for privacy”
“it's an astonishingly good model for this size and you can use it for all sorts of cool stuff”
“Gemini Nano is a lot less impressive than the SOTA models”
“it’s private and considering it’s from google that is kinda impressive”
“the uses this API is intended for are perfectly within the capabilities of local models”
“that is the equivalent of a High School level intelligent brain”
“I’ve deleted this model many times in the last year.”
“I didn't ask for this, I didn't make any choice for it to be installed, and I almost certainly won't ever use it.”
“One upside to this is that it doesn't use Gemma and instead uses Gemini.”
“Chrome quietly downloads Gemini Nano without any opt-out except through group policy.”
“At low temperature with a JSON schema constraint, the model literally just copies the last assistant example.”
“the hosted model absolutely trashed the local model on every aspect of speed, reliability, availability”
“the latest Gemma4 E2B and E4B models appear to be much better”
“the standard case currently is pretty rough”
“used to work really well, but requires a few switches to be manually switched on, and has recently gotten worse in quality”
“The model is not great, but it was the "least amount of setup" LLM I could run on someone else's machine.”
“the results are so bad; factual errors and hallucinations make it useless”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.