Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 3.6 Flash (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)
Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 19.6% less intelligence, 87.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 56.7% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 34.0 | −19.6% Gemini 3.6 Flash (Hig… is 19.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $1,614.42 | +87.7% Gemini 3.6 Flash (Hig… is 87.7% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.48s | 19.55s | +56.7% Gemini 3.6 Flash (Hig… is 56.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.75 / $3.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
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 3.6 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Gemini 3.6 Flash (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/gemini-3-6-flash · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/gemini-3-6-flash?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill