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Gemini 4 Carbon vs Inkling-Small

Gemini 4 Carbon leads the LLM Stats Score 57.5 to 37.7.

Google · Thinking Machines Lab · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Gemini 4 Carbon leads the overall LLM Stats Score 57.5 to 37.7, ranking #4 overall.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Gemini 4 Carbon

  • overall performance matters — it scores 57.5 and ranks #4 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

Choose Inkling-Small

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Gemini 4 Carbon
Google
Inkling-Small
Thinking Machines Lab
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
57.5
#4
37.7
#94
Reasoning
53.5
#7
36.9
#94
Coding
46.4
#4
28.3
#81
Agents
44.4
#4
21.8
#88
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
— / M
$0.30 / M
Output price
— / M
$1.20 / M
Context window
—
256,000

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

3 shared
Index
Gemini 4 Carbon
Inkling-Small
Vision
35.2#16
20.1#93
Tool use
34.3#5
18.5#89
Multimodal
36.4#10
16.9#101
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

16 reported for Gemini 4 Carbon · 24 for Inkling-Small

No common benchmarks found

Gemini 4 Carbon and Inkling-Smalldon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Inkling-Small specifies input context (256,000 tokens). Only Inkling-Small specifies output context (256,000 tokens).

Google
Gemini 4 Carbon
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Thinking Machines Lab
Inkling-Small
Input256,000 tokens
Output256,000 tokens
Tue Nov 10 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Both Gemini 4 Carbon and Inkling-Small support multimodal inputs.

They are both capable of processing various types of data, offering versatility in application.

Gemini 4 Carbon

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Inkling-Small

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Gemini 4 Carbon is licensed under a proprietary license, while Inkling-Small uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Gemini 4 Carbon

Proprietary

Closed source

Inkling-Small

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Gemini 4 Carbon was released on 2026-10-28, while Inkling-Small was released on 2026-07-30.

Gemini 4 Carbon is 3 months newer than Inkling-Small.

Gemini 4 Carbon

Oct 28, 2026

1 weeks ago

3mo newer
Inkling-Small

Jul 30, 2026

3 months ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Gemini 4 Carbon and Inkling-Small side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Gemini 4 Carbon
✓ Preferred
Inkling-Small
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Gemini 4 Carbon vs Inkling-Small.

Which is better, Gemini 4 Carbon or Inkling-Small?

Gemini 4 Carbon leads the LLM Stats Score 57.5 to 37.7. Gemini 4 Carbon is made by Google and Inkling-Small is made by Thinking Machines Lab. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Gemini 4 Carbon compare to Inkling-Small in benchmarks?

Gemini 4 Carbon scores Gray Swan IPI Benchmark: 100.0%, Vending-Bench 2: 100.0%, Graphwalks BFS >128k: 96.2%, WebDev Arena: 88.4%, SEC-bench Pro: 88.2%. Inkling-Small scores AIME 2026: 95.5%, VoiceBench Avg: 90.1%, GPQA: 89.5%, Global-MMLU-Lite: 86.7%, ARC-AGI: 84.0%.

What are the context window sizes for Gemini 4 Carbon and Inkling-Small?

Gemini 4 Carbon supports an unknown number of tokens and Inkling-Small supports 256K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Gemini 4 Carbon and Inkling-Small?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (57.5 vs 37.7), licensing (Proprietary vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Gemini 4 Carbon and Inkling-Small?

Gemini 4 Carbon is developed by Google and Inkling-Small is developed by Thinking Machines Lab.

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