Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) 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 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 12.6% less intelligence, 57.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 122.5% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 46.8 | 40.9 | −12.6% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 12.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,027.40 | $1,622.73 | +57.9% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 57.9% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.89s | 33.13s | +122.5% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Hig… is 122.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.75 / $3.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
- 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 Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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