Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) by Google or Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-03.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) scores 27.2 points higher (57.7 vs 30.5) but costs 1.0× as much to run the benchmark ($5903 vs $5764; both flagship class). Pick Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Gemini 3.8 Flash (High).
| Metric | Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) | Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.5 | 57.7 | +89.2% Gemini 4 Carbon (Medi… is 89.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,763.75 | $5,903.03 | +2.4% Gemini 4 Carbon (Medi… is 2.4% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 28.93s | 34.07s | +17.8% Gemini 4 Carbon (Medi… is 17.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $3.75 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (High): 89.2% more intelligence, 2.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 17.8% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 57.00 for $4766.
- Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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