Claude Opus 5 (High) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (High) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.8 Flash (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
Claude Opus 5 (High) scores 7.2 points higher (48.1 vs 40.9) but costs 2.7× as much to run the benchmark ($4332 vs $1623; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5 (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Gemini 3.8 Flash (High).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (High) | Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.1 | 40.9 | −15.0% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 15.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,331.68 | $1,622.73 | −62.5% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 62.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 23.65s | 30.91s | +30.7% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 30.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.75 / $3.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) vs Claude Opus 5 (High): 15.0% less intelligence, 62.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 30.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Gemini 3.8 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 (High)Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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