Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) vs Solar Mini 4

Which is better for the money: Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) by Google or Solar Mini 4 by Upstage? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

GoogleGemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)On the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 8.90
Total cost: $14.7

UpstageSolar Mini 4Off the frontier

Intelligence: 24.10
Total cost: $502

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Solar Mini 4 scores 15.2 points higher (24.1 vs 8.9) but costs 34× as much to run the benchmark ($502 vs $14.7; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Solar Mini 4 when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.

Metric	Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)	Solar Mini 4	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	8.9	24.1	+170.8% Solar Mini 4 is 2.7× more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$14.68	$502.02	+3319.8% Solar Mini 4 is 34× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	55.98s	23.11s	−58.7% Solar Mini 4 is 58.7% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.02 / $0.10	$0.10 / $0.40
Input modalities	Text, Image, Speech, Video	Text

Solar Mini 4 vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning): 170.8% more intelligence, 3319.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 58.7% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning): what beats it Solar Mini 4: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Solar Mini 4 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.

Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Solar Mini 4Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gemma-4-e4b/solar-mini4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemma-4-e4b/solar-mini4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill