Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 7.2% more intelligence, 75.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 55.9% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 22.2 | +7.2% Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 7.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $365.63 | −75.6% Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 75.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 9.51s | −55.9% Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 55.9% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.30 / $2.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
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-Lite is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Gemini 3.5 Flash-LiteToday's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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