Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) by Google or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) by Alibaba? 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 36.7 points higher (54.2 vs 17.5) but costs 3.5× as much to run the benchmark ($5725 vs $1636; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) when you need intelligence above 17.5, and Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) when 17.5 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 54.2 | 17.5 | −67.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 67.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,725.02 | $1,636.35 | −71.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 71.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.28s | 56.99s | +250.1% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 250.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (Low): 67.7% less intelligence, 71.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 250.1% slower 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 54.60 for $1124.
Gemini 4 Carbon (Low)Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)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/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-carbon-low/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill