Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemini 4 Carbon (High) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-28.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 4 Carbon (High) scores 20.9 points higher (59.4 vs 38.5) but costs 2.1× as much to run the benchmark ($8240 vs $3894; both flagship class). Pick Gemini 4 Carbon (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback).
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) | Gemini 4 Carbon (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 38.5 | 59.4 | +54.3% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 54.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,893.86 | $8,239.69 | +111.6% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 2.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.87s | 105.72s | +971.1% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 971.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 4 Carbon (High) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback): 54.3% more intelligence, 111.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 971.1% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Astra (Xhigh) scores 55.30 for $3746.
- Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback)Gemini 4 Carbon (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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