Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite

Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, 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.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 42.30
Total cost: $860

GoogleGemini 3.1 Flash-LiteOff the frontier

Intelligence: 15.60
Total cost: $156

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 26.7 points higher (42.3 vs 15.6) but costs 5.5× as much to run the benchmark ($860 vs $156; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, 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 (Low, Default Fallback)	Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	42.3	15.6	−63.1% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 63.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$860.33	$155.87	−81.9% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 81.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	13.42s	6.15s	−54.2% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 54.2% 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 (Low, Default Fallback): 63.1% less intelligence, 81.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 54.2% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.

Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Gemini 3.1 Flash-LiteToday's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

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