Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 35.90
Total cost: $482

GoogleGemini 3.1 Flash-LiteOff the frontier

Intelligence: 15.60
Total cost: $156

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… scores 20.3 points higher (35.9 vs 15.6) but costs 3.1× as much to run the benchmark ($482 vs $156; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 15.6, and Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite when 15.6 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)	Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	35.9	15.6	−56.5% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 56.5% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$482.13	$155.87	−67.7% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 67.7% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	6.19s	6.15s	−0.6% Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is 0.6% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$0.25 / $1.50
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image, Speech, Video

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 56.5% less intelligence, 67.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 0.6% faster end-to-end.

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

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
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 Sonnet 5.5 (Low, 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-sonnet-5-5-low/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-preview · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-preview?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill