Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-02.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) scores 9.6 points higher (57.7 vs 48.1) but costs 2.9× as much to run the benchmark ($5903 vs $2031; both flagship class). Pick Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) 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 Carbon (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.1 | 57.7 | +20.0% Gemini 4 Carbon (Medi… is 20.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,031.27 | $5,903.03 | +190.6% Gemini 4 Carbon (Medi… is 2.9× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 28.18s | Not reported | — not comparable |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 20.0% more intelligence, 190.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.
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 54.50 for $1124.
- Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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