gpt2 vs distilgpt2

Specs, VRAM requirements and download trends — updated 6 August 2026.

openai-community · A
Params
140 M
Context
30d
13.7 M
mit · commercial OK
distilbert · B
Params
90 M
Context
30d
2.6 M
apache-2.0 · commercial OK

Specification comparison

Differences are highlighted; identical values are muted.

Specification gpt2 distilgpt2
Parameters 140 M 90 M
Architecture GPT2LMHeadModel GPT2LMHeadModel
Context length
Licence mit apache-2.0
Commercial use Allowed Allowed
Languages 1 1
Downloads 30d 13,734,664 2,640,611
Downloads all time 901.9 M 252.9 M
Quantizations on the Hub SAFETENSORS SAFETENSORS
Gated No No
First seen on the Hub 2022-03-02 2022-03-02

Download trend

Daily snapshots, last 10 days (28 Jul – 6 Aug)

13.9 M2.5 M
gpt2 distilgpt2

VRAM side by side

On RTX 4090 · 24 GB · 8K context unless noted

distilgpt2 · fp16 0.9 GB / 24 GB
✅ Runs comfortably
gpt2 · fp16 1.1 GB / 24 GB
✅ Runs comfortably

Adjacent comparisons