Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 46.80
Total cost: $3158

GoogleGemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 39.80
Total cost: $1100

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 7.0 points higher (46.8 vs 39.8) but costs 2.9× as much to run the benchmark ($3158 vs $1100; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium).

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback)	Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	46.8	39.8	−15.0% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Med… is 15.0% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,157.66	$1,100.06	−65.2% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Med… is 65.2% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	10.79s	Not reported	— not comparable
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.75 / $3.75
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image, Speech, Video

Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback): 15.0% less intelligence, 65.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.

Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback)Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-low/gemini-3-8-flash-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-low/gemini-3-8-flash-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill