The closest alternative to Gemma 3 27B is Nova Micro 1.0 — comparable intelligence (10.3 vs 10.3); for a cheaper option, Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) runs Free/M vs $0.080/M; for more speed, Mercury 2 hits 456 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Nova Micro 1.0 is the closest alternative to Gemma 3 27B, with an Intelligence Index of 10.3 (Gemma 3 27B scores 10.3) at $0.035 per million input tokens.
Yes — Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) costs Free per million input tokens versus $0.080 for Gemma 3 27B, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Gemma 3 27B — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.