// head_to_head
Gemma 4 31B vs Inkling
Published LiveBench scores across all seven categories, live list pricing, context windows, and the measured cost of a point of capability — for both models, side by side.
Inkling scores higher, Gemma 4 31B costs less — it depends on your workload.
Inkling is ahead by 8.3 points overall, and Gemma 4 31B lists 7.0× cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 8.3 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you. Gemma 4 31B also leads on measured cost per point of capability, at $0.0017 per point.
Gemma 4 31B
- Blended / 1M
- $0.250
- Context
- 262K
- Released
- Apr 2, 2026
- Overall score
- 38.7
thinkingmachines
Inkling
- Blended / 1M
- $1.76
- Context
- 524K
- Released
- Jul 17, 2026
- Overall score
- 47.0
Specs and pricing
| Metric | Gemma 4 31B | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Weighted mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 38.7 | 47.0win |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.0017win | $0.0179 |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.250win | $1.76 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.200win | $1.00 |
| Output price / 1M | $0.400win | $4.05 |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | — | $0.170 |
| Context window | 262K | 524Kwin |
| Max output tokens | 16K | 472Kwin |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — Gemma 4 31B on top, Inkling below, both out of 100.
What each one costs to run
Per-token prices are hard to feel. These are monthly list costs for both models across five workload shapes, using each provider's published cached-input rate where there is one.
| Workload | Gemma 4 31B | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $80.00/mo | $504.24/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $184.00/mo | $711.00/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $192.00/mo | $659.20/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $230.00/mo | $1,262/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $540.00/mo | $2,490/mo |
Which should you pick?
You are running this at volume
Gemma 4 31B
Lowest measured cost per point of capability at $0.0017 per point — the gap compounds with every request.
Quality matters more than the bill
Inkling
Highest overall LiveBench score of the two at 47.0.
The workload is coding or agentic work
Gemma 4 31B
Leads on long-horizon agentic — 10.7 against 8.5.
You need to fit large documents in one call
Inkling
Wider context window — 524K against 262K.
Gemma 4 31B vs Inkling FAQ
Which is better, Gemma 4 31B or Inkling?
Inkling scores higher, Gemma 4 31B costs less — it depends on your workload. Inkling is ahead by 8.3 points overall, and Gemma 4 31B lists 7.0× cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 8.3 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you. Gemma 4 31B also leads on measured cost per point of capability, at $0.0017 per point.
Is Gemma 4 31B cheaper than Inkling?
Gemma 4 31B is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, Gemma 4 31B lists at $0.250 per million tokens and Inkling at $1.76 — Gemma 4 31B is 7.0× cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — Gemma 4 31B charges $0.200 in and $0.400 out, Inkling charges $1.00 and $4.05 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Gemma 4 31B vs Inkling: which scores higher on benchmarks?
Gemma 4 31B scores 38.7 and Inkling scores 47.0 overall on LiveBench, the weighted mean of its seven categories. That is a 8.3-point lead for Inkling. Category scores differ from the overall figure — a model can lead on reasoning and trail on coding, which the per-category table above breaks out.
Which gives better value for money, Gemma 4 31B or Inkling?
Gemma 4 31B. Cost per point divides the measured dollars LiveBench spent running the benchmark by the score it earned, so it captures something token pricing misses: a reasoning model can emit many times more tokens than its per-token rate suggests. Gemma 4 31B works out at $0.0017 per point and Inkling at $0.0179.
Does Gemma 4 31B or Inkling have a bigger context window?
Inkling has the larger context window: 262K for Gemma 4 31B against 524K for Inkling. Note that a window you can fill is not a window you should fill — retrieval quality usually degrades well before the limit, and you pay for every token you put in it.
Do Gemma 4 31B and Inkling support prompt caching?
Inkling publishes a cached-input rate of $0.170 per million tokens against a full input rate of $1.00. The catalogue lists no separate cached rate for Gemma 4 31B, which means the provider does not price it separately here — not that caching is unavailable.
Related comparisons
How these numbers are produced
- Price — provider list price from OpenRouter, refreshed every 15 minutes. “Blended” is a 3:1 input:output mix.
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-10-25, using their own category map. Each model shows its strongest published run. A blank means “not evaluated”, never “bad”.
- Cost per point — the measured dollars LiveBench spent on the run, divided by the score it earned.
- “Win” — awarded only past a threshold: one full point on a benchmark score, 10% on a price, 25% on a context window. Anything tighter reports as a tie, because effort settings alone move a LiveBench score by more than that.
Published benchmarks rank models on someone else's tasks. Before committing, see LLM & agent evaluation for building an eval on your own.