Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Gemini 3.5 Flash (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) scores 11.9 points higher (32.6 vs 20.7) but costs 2.8× as much to run the benchmark ($4222 vs $1501; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 32.6 | +57.5% Gemini 3.5 Flash (Hig… is 57.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $4,222.12 | +181.2% Gemini 3.5 Flash (Hig… is 2.8× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.89s | 16.52s | −20.9% Gemini 3.5 Flash (Hig… is 20.9% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $1.50 / $9.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 57.5% more intelligence, 181.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 20.9% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Gemini 3.5 Flash (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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