Gemma 4 26B A4B vs Inkling
Inkling leads Gemma 4 26B A4B on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 25.0 to 16.7, and Gemma 4 26B A4B costs 6.8x less per output token ($0.60 vs $4.05 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 41 benchmarks have a result for both.
Gemma 4 26B A4B or Inkling: which to pick
Only Inkling has a coding score, 31.5 on the Vibe Coding Index; Gemma 4 26B A4B has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B for output tokens 6.8x cheaper ($0.60 vs $4.05 per million) and work measured by WeirdML or LMArena Text: mathematical work, where it leads.
- Shared results
- 41
- Gemma 4 26B A4B only
- 14
- Inkling only
- 61
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Inkling has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Inkling
Inkling leads, 25.0 against 16.7.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
Inkling
Inkling leads, 22.5 against 2.9.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Inkling has a GPQA Diamond result, 87.1%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Inkling has a MMLU Pro result, 86.3%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Inkling has a Design Arena: websites result, 1224.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
No call
Only Inkling has a Vals Index result, 29.0%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Inkling
Inkling takes 524K tokens against 262K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Gemma 4 26B A4B
Gemma 4 26B A4B $0.0004, Inkling $0.0030 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Inkling has the number, $0.76.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Gemma 4 26B A4B not benchmarked, Inkling 31.5 from 6 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Agentic work, 19.6 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- AA Agentic Index: Gemma 4 26B A4B 2.9 against Inkling 22.5, 19.6 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Gemma 4 26B A4B $0.60 against Inkling $4.05 per million output tokens, 6.8x apart.
- Context window
- Gemma 4 26B A4B takes 262K tokens, Inkling 524K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Bars | Inkling | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 1 | 8 | ||
| Intelligence | 0 | 2 | ||
| Agentic work | 0 | 1 | ||
| Reasoning | 0 | 6 | ||
| Math | 1 | 2 | ||
| Knowledge | 1 | 3 | ||
| General | 8 | 8 | ||
| All shared boards | 11 | 30 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index18
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | Not measured | 64.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1360 | 1414 | Inkling |
| AA Coding Index | 39.3 | 52.1 | Inkling |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 77.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 19.2% | Only Inkling measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | Not measured | 11.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | Not measured | 14.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 47.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 7.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 26.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 66.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| SciCode | 40.0% | 47.0% | Inkling |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 25.0% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| FrontierCode | Not measured | 14.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierSWE | Not measured | 4.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| WeirdML | 35.2% | 32.3% | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| ALE-Bench | 927.2 | 946.0 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1446 | 1466 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1454 | 1465 | Inkling |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1351 | 1404 | Inkling |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1362 | 1399 | Inkling |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 16.7 | 25.0 | Inkling |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.9 | 148.4 | Inkling |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 2.9 | 22.5 | Inkling |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | Not measured | 1196 | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench research | Not measured | 59.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench browser | Not measured | 16.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | Not measured | 14.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | Not measured | 46.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 15.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 28.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 3.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 38.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 43.6% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| APEX-Agents | Not measured | 33.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 28 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index06
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 87.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | Not measured | 78.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | Not measured | 78.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 79.2% | 87.2% | Inkling |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 19.3% | 31.9% | Inkling |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 73.2% | 88.3% | Inkling |
| ARC-AGI | Not measured | 79.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Not measured | 36.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 50.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 21.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1438 | 1451 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1447 | 1466 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1448 | 1448 | Inkling |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1264 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1293 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | 82.2% | 88.9% | Inkling |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 33.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | Not measured | 4.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| ProofBench | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1470 | 1479 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1475 | 1460 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index13
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 86.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 83.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 68.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 75.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 64.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 41.2% | Only Inkling measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | Not measured | 40.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1446 | 1455 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1428 | 1447 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1457 | 1448 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1429 | 1438 | Inkling |
| FACTS Benchmark Suite | 42.7% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | Not measured | 1224 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | Not measured | 1198 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | Not measured | 1165 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | Not measured | 1156 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | Not measured | 1160 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | Not measured | 1205 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | Not measured | 1108 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | Not measured | 1089 | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench design | Not measured | 58.3% | Only Inkling measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index88
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | Not measured | 29.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench data analysis | Not measured | 72.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 58.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 36.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Not measured | 49.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| IFBench | 72.4% | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 65.7% | 77.3% | Inkling |
| DTBench | 74.9% | 87.5% | Inkling |
| LMCA | 29.7% | 37.6% | Inkling |
| LMArena Text | 1434 | 1442 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1420 | 1425 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1400 | 1390 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Vision | 1260 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1444 | 1442 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1421 | 1434 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1495 | 1493 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1445 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1429 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1403 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1460 | 1455 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1415 | 1449 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1434 | 1430 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1450 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1441 | 1437 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1427 | 1435 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1405 | 1404 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1403 | 1394 | Gemma 4 26B A4B |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1256 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1312 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1268 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1272 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | 1297 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1191 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1256 | Not measured | Only Gemma 4 26B A4B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 26B A4B | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Gemma 4 26B A4B costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Gemma 4 26B A4B costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Gemma 4 26B A4B costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Google Gemma 4 26B A4B | Thinking Machines Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Thinking Machines | |
| Weights | Open weights | Open weights |
| Released | April 3, 2026 | July 17, 2026 |
| Context window | 262K | 524K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.15 | $0.975 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.60 | $4.05 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | 31.5 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 1 | 6 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $0.76 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Gemma 4 26B A4B better than Inkling for coding?
Only Inkling has a coding score, 31.5 on the Vibe Coding Index; Gemma 4 26B A4B has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B for output tokens 6.8x cheaper ($0.60 vs $4.05 per million) and work measured by WeirdML or LMArena Text: mathematical work, where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Inkling?
Gemma 4 26B A4B costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Inkling costs $0.975 and $4.05. Cost per solved task is known for Inkling only.
Which has the bigger context window, Gemma 4 26B A4B or Inkling?
Inkling, with 524K tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks is the Gemma 4 26B A4B vs Inkling comparison based on?
41 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Gemma 4 26B A4B's coding index rests on 1 independent benchmark and Inkling's on 6. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.