Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 38.0 points higher (53.6 vs 15.6) but costs 14× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $156; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 15.6, and Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite when 15.6 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 15.6 | −70.9% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 70.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $155.87 | −92.8% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 92.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 6.15s | −81.8% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 81.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.25 / $1.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 70.9% less intelligence, 92.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 81.8% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-preview · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-preview?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill