Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) vs Beam 1.0
Which is better for the money: Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) by Google or Beam 1.0 by Reflection? 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 36.5 points higher (54.2 vs 17.7) but costs 23× as much to run the benchmark ($5725 vs $250; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) when you need intelligence above 17.7, and Beam 1.0 when 17.7 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) | Beam 1.0 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 54.2 | 17.7 | −67.3% Beam 1.0 is 67.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,725.02 | $249.83 | −95.6% Beam 1.0 is 95.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.28s | 7.85s | −51.8% Beam 1.0 is 51.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.40 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text |
Beam 1.0 vs Gemini 4 Carbon (Low): 67.3% less intelligence, 95.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 51.8% 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.
- Beam 1.0 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Terra (Medium) scores 38.20 for $190.
Gemini 4 Carbon (Low)Beam 1.0Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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