BenchLeader

Gemini 4 Carbon vs GPT-5.2

Full profiles: Gemini 4 Carbon (Google) and GPT-5.2 (OpenAI): every benchmark, price and rank.

Updated · Data from 7 sources

As of 29 Oct 2026, Gemini 4 Carbon and GPT-5.2 are neck and neck on quality (65.1 vs 60.1 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±7.2 margin), and GPT-5.2 is 1.7× cheaper at $4.81 vs $8.00 per 1M tokens blended. Choose Gemini 4 Carbon for knowledge (76 vs 56), reasoning (79 vs 61), and coding (72 vs 63), where it also streams faster; choose GPT-5.2 for long context (66 vs 65).

Key facts (as of 29 Oct 2026)

  • Gemini 4 Carbon scores 65.1 on the BenchLeader Index and GPT-5.2 scores 60.1 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).
  • Gemini 4 Carbon costs $8.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
  • GPT-5.2 costs $4.81 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
  • Gemini 4 Carbon streams faster than GPT-5.2 (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 29 Oct 2026).
  • Of the 5 benchmarks both models have, Gemini 4 Carbon leads 4 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).

Which to pick for…

The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.

Use casePickWhyConfidence
CodingGemini 4 Carbon72 vs 63 category score; Vibe Code Bench v1.1 89.1% vs 53.5%High
ReasoningGemini 4 Carbon79 vs 61 category score; Humanity's Last Exam (AA) 60.4% vs 37.7%High
KnowledgeGemini 4 Carbon76 vs 56 category scoreHigh
Long documentsGPT-5.266 vs 65 category score; AA-LCR v1.1 82.7% vs 79.3%Medium
Lowest costGPT-5.2$4.81 vs $8.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.161 vs $0.320–
Fastest first answerEither103.1 s (Gemini 4 Carbon (high)) vs 88.3 s (GPT-5.2 (xhigh)) to the first answer token–
High volume on a budgetNeither flagshipA smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs–

Key differences

  • Gemini 4 Carbon (high) and GPT-5.2 (xhigh) are neck and neck on quality (65.1 vs 60.1, within the ±7.2 margin).
  • Gemini 4 Carbon (high) is stronger in coding, knowledge, reasoning.
  • GPT-5.2 (xhigh) is stronger in long context, agents & tools, instruction following, maths.
  • GPT-5.2 (xhigh) is 1.7× cheaper ($4.81 vs $8.00 per 1M blended).
  • Gemini 4 Carbon (high) streams 1.3× faster (100 vs 74 tokens per second).

At a glance

SpecGemini 4 CarbonGPT-5.2
DeveloperGoogleOpenAI
Released28 Oct 202611 Dec 2025
Context window (tokens)1,000,000400,000
Compared atGemini 4 Carbon (high)GPT-5.2 (xhigh)
Open weightsNoNo
Price in / out / cached input per 1M$4.00 / $20.00 / –$1.75 / $14.00 / $0.175

Category by category

Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.

CategoryGemini 4 Carbon (high)GPT-5.2 (xhigh)Leader
Reasoning78.960.9Gemini 4 Carbon
Coding71.762.9Gemini 4 Carbon
Agents & tools–54.7not comparable
Maths–56.8not comparable
Knowledge75.856.0Gemini 4 Carbon
Instruction following–73.6not comparable
Long context64.566.2GPT-5.2

Where sources disagree

Across the 5 benchmarks both have, Gemini 4 Carbon leads 4, GPT-5.2 leads 1.

Overall indexGemini 4 Carbon (high)GPT-5.2 (xhigh)Leader
BenchLeader Index65.160.1neck and neck

Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).

Price, speed and latency

List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page; suite cost is what Artificial Analysis paid to run its whole Intelligence Index.

MeasureGemini 4 Carbon (high)GPT-5.2 (xhigh)
Blended price per 1M tokens$8.00$4.81
Input / output per 1M$4.00 / $20.00$1.75 / $14.00
Cached input per 1M–$0.175
Price per task: chat reply$0.0076$0.0049
Price per task: summarize a 30-page report$0.060$0.029
Price per task: code edit$0.054$0.032
Price per task: agentic coding session$0.320$0.161
Price per task: structured extraction$0.012$0.0063
Cost to run a full benchmark suite$7.76–
Output speed100 tok/s74 tok/s
Time to first answer103.1 s88.3 s
Time to a complete answer108.1 s95.0 s

Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Gemini 4 Carbon (high) scores 65.1 and takes 103 s to its first answer token. GPT-5.2 (xhigh) scores 60.1 and takes 88 s to its first answer token; GPT-5.2 scores 58.0 in 2 s, GPT-5.2 (medium) scores 56.2 in 2 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.

Every benchmark

123 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.

MetricPublisherGemini 4 Carbon (high)GPT-5.2 (xhigh)
BenchLeader IndexBenchLeader65.160.1
Coding scoreBenchLeader71.762.9
Knowledge scoreBenchLeader75.856.0
Long context scoreBenchLeader64.566.2
Reasoning scoreBenchLeader78.960.9
Agents & tools scoreBenchLeader–54.7
Instruction following scoreBenchLeader–73.6
Maths scoreBenchLeader–56.8
Blended price $/MBenchLeader$8.00$4.81
Output speedBenchLeader100 tok/s74 tok/s
Time to first answerBenchLeader103.1 s88.3 s
Context windowBenchLeader1,000,000 tokens400,000 tokens
Reasoning
GPQA DiamondEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–91.4%
Humanity's Last ExamScale AI / CAIS–27.8%†
SimpleBenchSimpleBench–45.8%†
Arena Hard PromptsArena (LMArena)–1497†
LiveBench 1.0 ReasoningLiveBench–83.2%†
GPQA Diamond (AA)Artificial Analysis–90.3%
Humanity's Last Exam (AA)Artificial Analysis60.4%37.7%
HLE-Diamond (AA)Artificial Analysis69.1%–
GPQA Diamond (Vals)Vals AI–91.7%
Kagi LLM BenchmarkKagi LLM Benchmark–73.3%†
ARC-AGI-1ARC Prize–86.2%
ARC-AGI-2ARC Prize–52.9%
CritPtArtificial Analysis36.0%11.6%
CritPt v2 hard subset (AA)Artificial Analysis63.0%–
SciPredictScale AI SEAL–20.6%†
Chess PuzzlesEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–48.0%
Mystery Game PuzzlesEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–22.0%†
CL-benchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–18.2%†
LMCAEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–43.9%
DTBenchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–90.9%
ForecastBenchForecastBench–64.2%†
Coding
SWE-bench Verified (Epoch)Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub–73.8%†
SciCodeSciCode64.2%–
WeirdMLWeirdML–72.2%
GSO-BenchGSO-Bench–27.4%†
Show all 123 benchmarks
MetricPublisherGemini 4 Carbon (high)GPT-5.2 (xhigh)
Coding
Arena CodingArena (LMArena)–1515†
Arena WebDevArena (LMArena)–1417†
LiveBench 1.0 CodingLiveBench–76.1%†
LiveCodeBenchVals AI–85.4%
SWE-bench (Vals)Vals AI–75.8%
SWE-Bench ProScale AI SEAL–29.9%†
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)SWE-bench–69.0%†
SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold)SWE-bench–72.8%†
Vibe Code Bench v1.1Vals AI89.1%53.5%
SWE-Bench Pro (private)Scale AI SEAL–29.9%†
ALE-BenchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–1249.8†
AlgoTuneAlgoTune–2.0†
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA)Artificial Analysis65.2%–
FrontierCode 1.1 (AA)Artificial Analysis48.5%–
FrontierCode 2.0 (AA)Artificial Analysis40.6%–
Agents & tools
Terminal-BenchTerminal-Bench–64.9%†
GDPvalOpenAI–49.7%†
Remote Labor IndexScale AI / CAIS–2.1%†
LiveBench Agentic CodingLiveBench–50.3%†
Terminal-Bench HardArtificial Analysis–47.0%
τ²-Bench Telecom (AA)Artificial Analysis–84.8%
MCP AtlasScale AI SEAL–67.6%
BFCL OverallBerkeley Function Calling Leaderboard–55.9%†
τ²-benchτ²-bench–84.8%†
τ³-bench Bankingτ²-bench–32.2%†
τ³-Banking (AA)Artificial Analysis–11.1%†
Finance Agent v2.1Vals AI67.2%–
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1Vals AI17.5%–
Legal Research BenchVals AI55.8%–
Poker AgentVals AI–1131.8%†
Tax Agent BenchVals AI48.9%–
Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals)Vals AI–51.7%†
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals)Vals AI63.1%–
DeepResearch BenchDeepResearch Bench–41.1%†
METR Time HorizonsMETR–75.3%†
Vending-Bench 2Andon Labs16484.2†3591.3†
AutomationBenchArtificial Analysis77.8%–
GDP.pdf (AA)Artificial Analysis28.4%–
AA-Briefcase v1.1Artificial Analysis1609–
Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA)Artificial Analysis64.8%–
Maths
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub–67.4%
FrontierMath Tier 4Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub–31.7%
OTIS Mock AIMEEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–96.1%
ProofBenchVals AI–15.0%
LiveBench MathematicsLiveBench–93.2%†
AIME (Vals)Vals AI–96.9%
MGSMVals AI–94.0%
AIME 2026MathArena–98.3%†
HMMT February 2026MathArena–97.0%†
MathArena ApexMathArena–13.5%†
Arena MathsArena (LMArena)–1454†
Knowledge
SimpleQA VerifiedEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–37.1%
LiveBench 1.0 Data AnalysisLiveBench–78.2%†
AA-Omniscience v1.1Artificial Analysis53.5–
MMLU-ProVals AI–86.2%
LegalBenchVals AI–82.8%
CorpFinVals AI–65.9%
TaxEvalVals AI–75.8%
MedQAVals AI–94.1%
MultiNRCScale AI SEAL–42.2%†
CaseLaw v2Vals AI–66.0%
Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1Vals AI76.5%–
MedCodeVals AI–49.8%
MedScribeVals AI–84.4%
DrugDiscoveryBenchScale AI SEAL–29.3%
EBR-benchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–23.0%
AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracyArtificial Analysis58.3%–
AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucinationArtificial Analysis88.6%–
Global-MMLU-Lite (AA)Artificial Analysis–89.8%†
Instruction following
LiveBench LanguageLiveBench–79.8%†
LiveBench Instruction FollowingLiveBench–61.8%†
IFBenchArtificial Analysis–75.4%
TutorBenchScale AI SEAL–53.5%†
Arena Instruction FollowingArena (LMArena)–1457†
Human preference
Arena TextArena (LMArena)–1476†
Arena Creative WritingArena (LMArena)–1433†
Arena Multi-turnArena (LMArena)–1495†
Arena Longer QueriesArena (LMArena)–1472†
Multimodal
Arena VisionArena (LMArena)–1268†
MMMU-ProArtificial Analysis–74.6%†
VISTAScale AI SEAL–46.6%†
MMMU-Pro (Vals)Vals AI–86.7%
MortgageTaxVals AI–67.1%
VPCTEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–84.0%
Blueprint-Bench 2Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub58.6%†–
Long context
AA-LCR v1.1Artificial Analysis79.3%82.7%
Arena DocumentArena (LMArena)–1425†
Composite
Epoch Capabilities IndexEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–153.7†
LiveBench 1.0LiveBench–74.6%†
AA Intelligence Index v5.0Artificial Analysis59.4–
AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2Artificial Analysis–30.4
AA Progress Index v1Artificial Analysis351.6295.5
Vals IndexVals AI70.4–
Vals Finance IndexVals AI66.3%–
Vals RSI IndexVals AI–15.8%
Safety & honesty
FORTRESSScale AI SEAL–17.5%†
MASKScale AI SEAL–86.7%†
PropensityBenchScale AI SEAL–34.4%†

Data as of 2026-10-29. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.

What changed

  • GPT-5.2 (xhigh): 1 new result (AA Progress Index v1).
  • GPT-5.2 (xhigh): 1 new result (Vals RSI Index).
  • GPT-5.2 (xhigh): BenchLeader Index 60.9 → 60.4.
  • GPT-5.2 (xhigh): 1 score revision.
  • GPT-5.2 (xhigh): 1 new result (DrugDiscoveryBench).

Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs

Gemini 4 Carbon vs GPT-5.2: questions

Is Gemini 4 Carbon better than GPT-5.2?
Gemini 4 Carbon (high) and GPT-5.2 (xhigh) are neck and neck on quality (65.1 vs 60.1, within the ±7.2 margin). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; the two are within the margin of error as of 29 Oct 2026, so check the category scores for your use.
Gemini 4 Carbon vs GPT-5.2: which is cheaper, and will that change?
GPT-5.2 is cheaper today: $4.81 against $8.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
Is Gemini 4 Carbon or GPT-5.2 better for coding?
Gemini 4 Carbon scores higher in coding (72 vs 63 on the category index, where 50 is average).
Which is faster, Gemini 4 Carbon or GPT-5.2?
Gemini 4 Carbon streams faster (100 vs 74 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
Which is better for long documents?
GPT-5.2 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (66 vs 65). Gemini 4 Carbon accepts more context: 1,000,000 against 400,000 tokens for GPT-5.2.
More questions (3)
Which has lower latency?
GPT-5.2 answers first: 88.3 s against 103.1 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
Do independent benchmarks agree on Gemini 4 Carbon vs GPT-5.2?
Across the 5 benchmarks both have, Gemini 4 Carbon leads 4, GPT-5.2 leads 1.
When was Gemini 4 Carbon released?
Gemini 4 Carbon was released on 28 Oct 2026.