Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback) 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 2026-11-10.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback)On the frontier

Intelligence: 64.60
Total cost: $22191

GoogleGemini 3.5 Flash-LiteOff the frontier

Intelligence: 11.70
Total cost: $654

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 52.9 points higher (64.6 vs 11.7) but costs 34× as much to run the benchmark ($22191 vs $654; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 11.7, and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite when 11.7 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback)	Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	64.6	11.7	−81.9% Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 81.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$22,191.42	$653.82	−97.1% Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 97.1% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	258.66s	7.92s	−96.9% Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 96.9% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$8.00 / $40.0	$0.30 / $2.50
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image, Speech, Video

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback): 81.9% less intelligence, 97.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 96.9% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite: what beats it

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-2/gemini-3-5-flash-lite · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-2/gemini-3-5-flash-lite?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill

Depends on your budget

Against the frontier

Compare something else