Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) 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 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) scores 6.4 points higher (40.9 vs 34.5) but costs 29× as much to run the benchmark ($1623 vs $56.4; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) when you need intelligence above 34.5, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) when 34.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) | Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 40.9 | +18.6% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 18.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $1,622.73 | +2779.2% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 29× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.10s | 31.03s | +136.9% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 136.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $0.75 / $3.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 18.6% more intelligence, 2779.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 136.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- 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 Haiku 5.5 (Medium)Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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