Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) by Google or Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-02.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) scores 47.7 points higher (57.7 vs 10.0) but costs 2.2× as much to run the benchmark ($5903 vs $2642; both flagship class). Pick Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning).
| Metric | Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) | Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 57.7 | 10.0 | −82.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 82.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,903.03 | $2,641.61 | −55.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 55.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | Not reported | 15.02s | — not comparable |
| 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 (Non-reasoning) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium): 82.7% less intelligence, 55.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 54.50 for $1124.
Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium)Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
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