Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) scores 20.2 points higher (40.9 vs 20.7) but costs 1.1× as much to run the benchmark ($1623 vs $1501; both premium class). Pick Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 40.9 | +97.6% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 97.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $1,622.73 | +8.1% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 8.1% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.84s | 33.13s | +59.0% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 59.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.75 / $3.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 97.6% more intelligence, 8.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 59.0% slower 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 3.8 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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