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

Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, 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 (Max, Default Fallback)On the frontier

Intelligence: 57.60
Total cost: $8708

GoogleGemini 3.1 Flash-LiteOff the frontier

Intelligence: 15.60
Total cost: $156

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 42.0 points higher (57.6 vs 15.6) but costs 56× as much to run the benchmark ($8708 vs $156; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, 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 (Max, Default Fallback)	Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	57.6	15.6	−72.9% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 72.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$8,708.20	$155.87	−98.2% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 98.2% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	626.13s	6.15s	−99.0% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 99.0% 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 (Max, Default Fallback): 72.9% less intelligence, 98.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 99.0% faster end-to-end.

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

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, 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.

Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, 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/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-preview · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-preview?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill