Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) vs Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) by Google or Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) by Mistral? 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 54.0 points higher (58.3 vs 4.3) but costs 136× as much to run the benchmark ($5903 vs $43.4; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) when you need intelligence above 4.3, and Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) when 4.3 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) | Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 58.3 | 4.3 | −92.6% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 92.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,903.03 | $43.43 | −99.3% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 99.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 32.32s | 15.34s | −52.5% Mistral Small 4 (Reas… is 52.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.15 / $0.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium): 92.6% less intelligence, 99.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 52.5% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) scores 18.60 for $39.6.
Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium)Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)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-medium/mistral-small-4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-carbon-medium/mistral-small-4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill