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Van Data Team

text model comparison

Claude Fable 5.1 vs Gemini 4 Carbon

Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon are both current text models, from Anthropic and Google. Gemini 4 Carbon is 80% cheaper per 1M input tokens than Claude Fable 5.1, $2 vs $10. On Arena Text, Claude Fable 5.1 scores 1504 Elo and Gemini 4 Carbon 1528 Elo (Arena, measured October 28, 2026).

Higher Arena Text
Gemini 4 Carbon1528 Elo against 1504 Elo
Lower price per 1M input tokens
Gemini 4 Carbon$2 against $10
Newer release
Gemini 4 CarbonOct 2026 against Sep 2026

Data verified November 5, 2026 · Dataset 2026-11-05

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Side by side

Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon, line by line

Prices in effect today, compared at the same tier wherever both list one. The better value in each row is highlighted.

FactClaude Fable 5.1Gemini 4 Carbon
Price
Price per 1M input tokens$10$2 (better)
Price per 1M output tokens$50$10 (better)
Independent benchmarks
Arena Text1504 Elo (#5 of 52)1528 Elo (#1 of 52) (better)
Arena WebDev1746 Elo (#6 of 46)1768 Elo (#4 of 46) (better)
FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2)90.2% (#5 of 41)Not measured
SimpleQA Verified70.8% (#6 of 38)Not measured
Specs
ProviderAnthropicGoogle
Release dateSeptember 1, 2026October 28, 2026
AccessAPI onlylimited access
Context window1,000,000 tokensNot reported
Max output128,000 tokensNot reported
Inputtext, imagetext, image
Outputtexttext

Scores:Arena · 2026-11-03Epoch AI · 2026-11-03

Open both in the interactive comparison

Provider results

What the labs report

Results tables a lab published with one of its models, where it lists both Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon. These are the lab's own figures, not independent measurements, and each table is read on its own: labs run benchmarks with different harnesses and budgets.

Google, Gemini 4 Carbon launch table, October 28, 2026Google · 2026-11-05

BenchmarkClaude Fable 5.1Gemini 4 Carbon
CWE-bench58.0%71.0% (better)
SWE-sweep2.9%9.6% (better)
FrontierSWE 256.3%61.2% (better)
OSWorld-2.1offline subset76.8%81.5% (better)
AutomationBenchZapier31.4%53.9% (better)
Vending-Bench 2bank balance$5,422$16,484 (better)
Chartography46.2%72.5% (better)
Blueprint-Bench 2similarity score41.9%58.6% (better)
GraphWalks256K to 1M tokens, BFS F165.0%96.2% (better)
RiemannBench65.6%80.0% (better)

Google's table from the Gemini 4 Carbon announcement, evaluated without guardrails; Google publishes its methodology at deepmind.google/models/evals-methodology/gemini-4-carbon. The cybersecurity rows, Google's headline, come first. Left out here: the Artificial Analysis and Vals indexes and the two rows Artificial Analysis ran (Terminal-Bench 4.0 and Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1).

Charts

Against every current text model

Where Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon land among the current models of their task, on every independent benchmark, on price and on context.

Where each stands

On Arena Text, Claude Fable 5.1 ranks #5 and Gemini 4 Carbon #1 of 52 current models. Each bar is the share of current models it beats: on score, price and context.

Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon among the current text models, one row per benchmark, price and context window.

Independent benchmarks

Arena Text

Claude Fable 5.1:#5of 52

1,504 Elo · ahead of 90%

Gemini 4 Carbon:#1of 52

1,528 Elo · ahead of 100%

Arena WebDev

Claude Fable 5.1:#6of 46

1,746 Elo · ahead of 89%

Gemini 4 Carbon:#4of 46

1,768 Elo · ahead of 93%

FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2)

Claude Fable 5.1:#5of 41

90.2% · ahead of 90%

Gemini 4 Carbon: Not scored

SimpleQA Verified

Claude Fable 5.1:#6of 38

70.8% · ahead of 86%

Gemini 4 Carbon: Not scored

Price and context

Price per 1M input tokens

Claude Fable 5.1:#51of 55

$10 · cheaper than 2%

Gemini 4 Carbon:#30of 55

$2 · cheaper than 24%

Price per 1M output tokens

Claude Fable 5.1:#51of 55

$50 · cheaper than 2%

Gemini 4 Carbon:#35of 55

$10 · cheaper than 26%

Context window

Claude Fable 5.1:#26of 64

1M tokens · longer than 22%

Gemini 4 Carbon: Not listed

Scores fromArena · 2026-11-03Epoch AI · 2026-11-03

Quality against price

Arena Text · measured October 28, 2026

Claude Fable 5.1 scores 1,504 at $20; Gemini 4 Carbon scores 1,528 at $4 (blended price per 1M tokens). The line joins the current models no other beats on both price and Arena Text score; hover any point to name it.

Quality against priceArena Text score against price for 44 text models, Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon marked.1,2501,3001,3501,4001,4501,5001,550$0.30$1$3$10MOST ATTRACTIVE QUADRANTMedian price $3Median 1,476Blended price per 1M tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scaleArena Text (Elo)Gemini 4 CarbonClaude Fable 5.1
Quality against price: the data
Arena Text score against price for 44 text models, Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon marked.
ModelProviderBlended price per 1M tokensArena Text (Elo)
Gemini 4 CarbonGoogle$41,528
Gemini 4 ArgonGoogle$41,520
Claude Opus 5.5Anthropic$81,509
Muse WonderMeta$81,507
Claude Fable 5Anthropic$201,504
Claude Fable 5.1Anthropic$201,504
Gemini 3.8 FlashGoogle$1.501,496
Muse Spark 1.3Meta$21,495
Claude Opus 5Anthropic$101,492
Kimi K3Moonshot Kimi$61,488
GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI$81,485
Gemini 3.6 FlashGoogle$31,483
GPT-5.5OpenAI$111,482
Claude Opus 4.8Anthropic$101,482
Qwen3.8-MaxAlibaba Qwen$31,482
GPT-6.1 SolOpenAI$41,481
GLM-5.3Z.ai$2.151,481
MiMo-V2.6-ProXiaomi MiMo$0.541,480
Claude Sonnet 5.5Anthropic$41,477
GLM-5.3-FlashZ.ai$0.241,477
GPT-6 AstraOpenAI$201,476
DeepSeek-V4.1-FlashDeepSeek$0.521,476
GPT-5.4OpenAI$5.631,475
Gemini 3 Flash PreviewGoogle$1.131,473
Grok 4.20xAI$1.561,472
GPT-5.6 TerraOpenAI$4.501,467
Grok 4.5xAI$31,465
DeepSeek-V4-ProDeepSeek$1.981,465
Claude Sonnet 5Anthropic$41,462
GPT-6 SolOpenAI$41,458
Gemini 3.5 Flash-LiteGoogle$0.851,456
Grok 4.6xAI$31,455
GPT-5.6 LunaOpenAI$0.451,453
MiMo-V2.6-FlashXiaomi MiMo$0.181,448
Step 5 PreviewStepFun$1.431,448
Grok 4.3xAI$1.561,442
GPT-6 LunaOpenAI$0.201,441
Grok 4.7xAI$31,441
Mistral Large 4Mistral AI$1.051,432
Claude Haiku 5.5Anthropic$0.201,425
GPT-4.1OpenAI$3.501,415
Solar Pro 4Upstage$0.521,388
GPT-4.1 miniOpenAI$0.701,383
GPT-4.1 nanoOpenAI$0.181,322

Cost

What each costs

Example workloads at each provider's listed rates, then every other rate either one lists. The cheaper figure in each row is highlighted.

The same work, priced

For 10M input and 2M output tokens, Claude Fable 5.1 costs 5.0 times as much as Gemini 4 Carbon, at each provider's listed rates.

What Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon cost for the same work, at the rates each provider lists.

  • 10M input and 2M output tokens

    Claude Fable 5.1 costs 5.0× as much

    Claude Fable 5.1
    $200
    Gemini 4 Carbon
    $40

  • The same, with 9M of the input tokens cached

    Claude Fable 5.1 costs 4.9× as much

    Claude Fable 5.1
    $112.25
    Gemini 4 Carbon
    $22.90
Workload or rateClaude Fable 5.1Gemini 4 Carbon
Example workloads
10M input and 2M output tokens$200$40 (better)
The same, with 9M of the input tokens cached$112.25$22.90 (better)
The same, through the batch API$100Not listed
Other listed rates
1M input tokens, cached$0.25$0.10 (better)
1M input tokens, 5-minute cache write$12.50Not listed
1M input tokens, 1-hour cache write$20Not listed
1M input tokens, batch$5Not listed
1M output tokens, batch$25Not listed

Your own bill will differ. These figures use list prices and example workloads. The AI Model Cost Audit reviews your real usage, shortlists models that score as well for each task for less, and estimates the savings.

Launch price $100, regular price $150

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Verdict

When to choose each

Claude Fable 5.1

Where it leads

  • Batch pricing, $5 input and $25 output per 1M tokens

Best for

  • Long-horizon agentic coding where a large prompt prefix is replayed across many turns
  • Work where Claude Opus 5 at higher effort has already been evaluated and fell short

Watch out for

  • Base input and output pricing is unchanged from Fable 5 at $10 / $50; the saving is entirely in cache reads, so a workload with little cache reuse sees no discount
  • The 4.7-generation tokenizer produces roughly 30% more tokens for the same text than Claude Sonnet 4.6 and earlier, so per-token rates are not directly comparable across generations
  • Anthropic’s launch comparisons are self-reported and were not reproduced independently here
Full Claude Fable 5.1 profile

Gemini 4 Carbon

Where it leads

  • Lower input and output prices, $2 and $10 vs $10 and $50 per 1M tokens
  • Higher Arena Text score, 1528 Elo vs 1504 Elo
  • Higher Arena WebDev score, 1768 Elo vs 1746 Elo
  • Cheaper cached input, $0.10 vs $0.25 per 1M tokens

Best for

  • Finding, validating and patching vulnerabilities, for teams in Google's Fairwind Program
  • Long-horizon engineering over very long inputs, once access opens

Watch out for

  • Limited access: Google gives it first to a small group of cyber defenders, then to more trusted partners through its Fairwind Program, which governments, healthcare providers and telecoms apply to; there is no public API or app access yet
  • The $2 and $10 rates are introductory, with cached input 95% off; after an introductory period Google has not dated, $4 input and $20 output per 1M tokens apply
  • In Google's own table it trails GPT-6 Astra on FrontierSWE 2 (61.2% against 65.5%) and Claude Opus 5.5 on OSWorld-2.1 (81.5% against 87.2%)
  • Google publishes no context window or output limit for Carbon yet
Full Gemini 4 Carbon profile

From benchmark to production

Building on Claude Fable 5.1 or Gemini 4 Carbon?

Public scores rarely hold on your own data. We test both models on your real tasks, then build the agent or pipeline around the one that wins.

AI Model Cost AuditLaunch price $100, regular price $150What the audit includes

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FAQ

Claude Fable 5.1 vs Gemini 4 Carbon FAQ

Which is cheaper, Claude Fable 5.1 or Gemini 4 Carbon?

Gemini 4 Carbon is 80% cheaper per 1M input tokens than Claude Fable 5.1, $2 vs $10. For 10M input and 2M output tokens, Claude Fable 5.1 costs $200 and Gemini 4 Carbon $40 at standard rates.

Which is cheaper with prompt caching, Claude Fable 5.1 or Gemini 4 Carbon?

Claude Fable 5.1 charges $0.25 per 1M cached input tokens, 98% below its standard input rate, and Gemini 4 Carbon $0.10, 95% below. With 9M of 10M input tokens cached and 2M output tokens, Claude Fable 5.1 costs $112.25 and Gemini 4 Carbon $22.90.

Which scores higher on independent benchmarks, Claude Fable 5.1 or Gemini 4 Carbon?

Gemini 4 Carbon leads on Arena Text, 1528 Elo to 1504 Elo; Gemini 4 Carbon leads on Arena WebDev, 1768 Elo to 1746 Elo. Scores are independent evaluations, not either vendor's launch figures.

How do Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon compare in Google's own results?

In Gemini 4 Carbon launch table (October 28, 2026), Gemini 4 Carbon leads on CWE-bench, 71.0% to 58.0%; Gemini 4 Carbon leads on SWE-sweep, 9.6% to 2.9%; Gemini 4 Carbon leads on FrontierSWE 2, 61.2% to 56.3%. These are Google's figures, not independent measurements.

Further reading

More on Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon

Articles on Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon

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Production evaluation

Choosing between Claude Fable 5.1 and Gemini 4 Carbon?

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  • A head-to-head evaluation on your real workload
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