Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) vs Inkling (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) by Google or Inkling (Xhigh) by Thinking Machines? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-04.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) scores 41.7 points higher (54.2 vs 12.5) but costs 4.6× as much to run the benchmark ($5725 vs $1237; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) when you need intelligence above 12.5, and Inkling (Xhigh) when 12.5 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) | Inkling (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 54.2 | 12.5 | −76.9% Inkling (Xhigh) is 76.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,725.02 | $1,236.66 | −78.4% Inkling (Xhigh) is 78.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.28s | 14.06s | −13.6% Inkling (Xhigh) is 13.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $1.00 / $4.05 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image, Speech |
Inkling (Xhigh) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (Low): 76.9% less intelligence, 78.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 13.6% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 57.40 for $4766.
- Inkling (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 54.60 for $1124.
Gemini 4 Carbon (Low)Inkling (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-carbon-low/inkling · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-carbon-low/inkling?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill