Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) by Google or Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) scores 25.1 points higher (34.0 vs 8.9) but costs 110× as much to run the benchmark ($1614 vs $14.7; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.0 | 8.9 | −73.8% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 73.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,614.42 | $14.68 | −99.1% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 99.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 17.59s | 57.72s | +228.1% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 228.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $3.75 | $0.02 / $0.10 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) vs Gemini 3.6 Flash (High): 73.8% less intelligence, 99.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 228.1% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Gemini 3.6 Flash (High)Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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