Gemini 4 Carbon vs Muse Spark 1.1
Full profiles: Gemini 4 Carbon (Google) and Muse Spark 1.1 (Meta): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 8 sources
As of 29 Oct 2026, Gemini 4 Carbon and Muse Spark 1.1 are neck and neck on quality (65.1 vs 62.2 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±8.3 margin), and Muse Spark 1.1 is 4.0× cheaper at $2.00 vs $8.00 per 1M tokens blended. Gemini 4 Carbon leads in every category we measure both in. Muse Spark 1.1 streams ~2× faster.
Key facts (as of 29 Oct 2026)
- Gemini 4 Carbon scores 65.1 on the BenchLeader Index and Muse Spark 1.1 scores 62.2 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).
- Gemini 4 Carbon costs $8.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
- Muse Spark 1.1 costs $2.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
- Muse Spark 1.1 streams ~2× faster than Gemini 4 Carbon (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 29 Oct 2026).
- Of the 1 benchmarks both models have, Gemini 4 Carbon leads 1 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).
Gemini 4 Carbon benchmarks 
Muse Spark 1.1 benchmarks 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 case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Gemini 4 Carbon | 72 vs 66 category score; SciCode 64.2% vs 58.8% | Medium |
| Reasoning | Gemini 4 Carbon | 79 vs 68 category score | High |
| Knowledge | Gemini 4 Carbon | 76 vs 69 category score | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | – | Only Muse Spark 1.1 has an Arena rating (65 category score) | Not comparable |
| Lowest cost | Muse Spark 1.1 | $2.00 vs $8.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.092 vs $0.320 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Muse Spark 1.1 | 1.6 s (Muse Spark 1.1) vs 103.1 s (Gemini 4 Carbon (high)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Gemini 4 Carbon (high) and Muse Spark 1.1 are neck and neck on quality (65.1 vs 62.2, within the ±8.3 margin).
- Gemini 4 Carbon (high) is stronger in coding, knowledge, long context, reasoning.
- Muse Spark 1.1 is stronger in agents & tools, human preference, instruction following, maths, multimodal.
- Muse Spark 1.1 is 4.0× cheaper ($2.00 vs $8.00 per 1M blended).
- Muse Spark 1.1 streams 2.5× faster (247 vs 100 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Gemini 4 Carbon | Muse Spark 1.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Meta | |
| Released | 28 Oct 2026 | 9 Jul 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Compared at | Gemini 4 Carbon (high) | Muse Spark 1.1 |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $4.00 / $20.00 / – | $1.25 / $4.25 / $0.150 |
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.
| Category | Gemini 4 Carbon (high) | Muse Spark 1.1 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 78.9 | 67.8 | Gemini 4 Carbon |
| Coding | 71.7 | 66.1 | Gemini 4 Carbon |
| Agents & tools | – | 51.9 | not comparable |
| Maths | – | 61.2 | not comparable |
| Knowledge | 75.8 | 69.2 | Gemini 4 Carbon |
| Instruction following | – | 69.9 | not comparable |
| Human preference | – | 64.5 | not comparable |
| Multimodal | – | 63.6 | not comparable |
| Long context | 64.5 | – | not comparable |
Where sources disagree
Across the 1 benchmarks both have, Gemini 4 Carbon leads 1, Muse Spark 1.1 leads 0.
| Overall index | Gemini 4 Carbon (high) | Muse Spark 1.1 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 65.1 | 62.2 | neck 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.
| Measure | Gemini 4 Carbon (high) | Muse Spark 1.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $8.00 | $2.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $4.00 / $20.00 | $1.25 / $4.25 |
| Cached input per 1M | – | $0.150 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0076 | $0.0018 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.060 | $0.018 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.054 | $0.014 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.320 | $0.092 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.012 | $0.0034 |
| Cost to run a full benchmark suite | $7.76 | – |
| Output speed | 100 tok/s | 247 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 103.1 s | 1.6 s |
| Time to a complete answer | 108.1 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. Muse Spark 1.1 scores 62.2 and takes 2 s to its first answer token; Muse Spark 1.1 (xhigh) scores 59.5 in 19 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
98 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.
| Metric | Publisher | Gemini 4 Carbon (high) | Muse Spark 1.1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 65.1 | 62.2 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 71.7 | 66.1 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 75.8 | 69.2 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 64.5 | – |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 78.9 | 67.8 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | – | 51.9 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | – | 64.5 |
| Instruction following score | BenchLeader | – | 69.9 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | – | 61.2 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | – | 63.6 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $8.00 | $2.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 100 tok/s | 247 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 103.1 s | 1.6 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1510 |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | – | 87.7%† |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 89.8%† |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 60.4% | 46.2%† |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 69.1% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 91.2%† |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 36.0% | 15.1%† |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 63.0% | – |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 34.0%† |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 49.9%† |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 94.4%† |
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | 64.2% | 58.8% |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1533 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1542 |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | – | 77.2%† |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | – | 85.9%† |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 82.0%† |
| SWE-Bench Pro | Scale AI SEAL | – | 61.5% |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | – | 31.1%† |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | – | 0.0%† |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 89.1% | 72.2%† |
| SWE-Bench Pro (private) | Scale AI SEAL | – | 61.5% |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | – | 42.2%† |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | – | 41.5%† |
| Surface Evolver Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 52.5%† |
Show all 98 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Gemini 4 Carbon (high) | Muse Spark 1.1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 53.3% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 65.2% | 6.1%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 77.9%† |
| FrontierCode 1.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 48.5% | – |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 40.6% | – |
| Agents & tools | |||
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | – | 31.8% |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | – | -6.9 |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | – | 58.5%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 69.3%† |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | – | 88.1% |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | – | 40.5%† |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 31.8%† |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | – | 57.2%† |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | 67.2% | – |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 17.5% | – |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | – | 20.0%† |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 55.8% | 38.0%† |
| SkillsBench | Vals AI | – | 59.2%† |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 48.9% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 63.1% | – |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | – | 1.7%† |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 7.9% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 16484.2† | 6520.5 |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 77.8% | 38.9%† |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 28.4% | 14.4%† |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1609 | – |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 64.8% | – |
| Maths | |||
| ProofBench | Vals AI | – | 39.0% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | – | 87.1%† |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1493 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 57.8% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | – | 72.5%† |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 53.5 | – |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | – | 88.7%† |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | – | 85.0%† |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | – | 71.3%† |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | – | 79.7%† |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | – | 55.0% |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | – | 57.0% |
| MultiNRC | Scale AI SEAL | – | 65.6% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | – | 56.4%† |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 76.5% | – |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | – | 88.9%† |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 61.3%† |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 15.0% |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 58.3% | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 88.6% | – |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | – | 74.3%† |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | – | 69.6%† |
| MultiChallenge | Scale AI SEAL | – | 75.3% |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1472 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1490 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | – | 1244 |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1443 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1496 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1480 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1293 |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 86.6%† |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | – | 66.1%† |
| VTB | Scale AI SEAL | – | 44.8% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 58.6%† | – |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 79.3% | 77.7%† |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1480 |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | – | 7.2%† |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 154.1 |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | – | 75.3%† |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | 59.4 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | – | 33.7† |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | 351.6 | 302.7† |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | 70.4 | – |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | 66.3% | – |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | – | 66.7%† |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | – | 12.4% |
Data as of 2026-10-29. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
What changed
- Muse Spark 1.1: 1 score revision.
- Muse Spark 1.1: 1 score revision.
- Muse Spark 1.1: BenchLeader Index 63.1 → 62.5.
- Muse Spark 1.1: 1 score revision.
- Muse Spark 1.1: 1 new result (PRBench Legal).
- Muse Spark 1.1: 1 new result (VTB).
- Muse Spark 1.1: BenchLeader Index 62.5 → 63.1.
- Muse Spark 1.1: 2 new results (PRBench Legal, MultiNRC).
- Muse Spark 1.1: BenchLeader Index 63.0 → 62.5.
- Muse Spark 1.1: 1 new result (PRBench Finance).
Related comparisons
- Gemini 4 Carbon vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Gemini 4 Carbon vs GPT-6 Astra
- Gemini 4 Carbon vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- Muse Spark 1.1 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Muse Spark 1.1 vs GPT-6 Astra
- Muse Spark 1.1 vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- Muse Spark 1.1 vs Claude Fable 5.1
- Gemini 4 Argon vs Muse Spark 1.1
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Gemini 4 Carbon vs Muse Spark 1.1: questions
- Is Gemini 4 Carbon better than Muse Spark 1.1?
- Gemini 4 Carbon (high) and Muse Spark 1.1 are neck and neck on quality (65.1 vs 62.2, within the ±8.3 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 Muse Spark 1.1: which is cheaper, and will that change?
- Muse Spark 1.1 is cheaper today: $2.00 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 Muse Spark 1.1 better for coding?
- Gemini 4 Carbon scores higher in coding (72 vs 66 on the category index, where 50 is average). On SciCode, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 64.2% for Gemini 4 Carbon against 58.8% for Muse Spark 1.1.
- Which is faster, Gemini 4 Carbon or Muse Spark 1.1?
- Muse Spark 1.1 streams ~2× faster (247 vs 100 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
- Which is better for long documents?
- Both take about 1M tokens: Gemini 4 Carbon 1,000,000, Muse Spark 1.1 1,048,576.
More questions (3)
- Which has lower latency?
- Muse Spark 1.1 answers first: 1.6 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 Muse Spark 1.1?
- Across the 1 benchmarks both have, Gemini 4 Carbon leads 1, Muse Spark 1.1 leads 0.
- When was Gemini 4 Carbon released?
- Gemini 4 Carbon was released on 28 Oct 2026.