Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 4 Argon (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemini 4 Argon (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 4 Argon (High) scores 1.4 points higher (52.6 vs 51.2) but costs 1.5× as much to run the benchmark ($2407 vs $1627; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Gemini 4 Argon (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba….
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Gemini 4 Argon (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 52.6 | +2.7% Gemini 4 Argon (High) is 2.7% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $2,407.24 | +48.0% Gemini 4 Argon (High) is 48.0% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.68s | 63.35s | +206.3% Gemini 4 Argon (High) is 206.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Gemini 4 Argon (High) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 2.7% more intelligence, 48.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 206.3% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Gemini 4 Argon (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Gemini 4 Argon (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-medium/gemini-4-argon · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/gemini-4-argon?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill