Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 4 Argon (High)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemini 4 Argon (High) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 35.90
Total cost: $482

GoogleGemini 4 Argon (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 52.60
Total cost: $2407

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Gemini 4 Argon (High) scores 16.7 points higher (52.6 vs 35.9) but costs 5.0× as much to run the benchmark ($2407 vs $482; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 4 Argon (High) when you need intelligence above 35.9, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… when 35.9 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)	Gemini 4 Argon (High)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	35.9	52.6	+46.5% Gemini 4 Argon (High) is 46.5% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$482.13	$2,407.24	+399.3% Gemini 4 Argon (High) is 5.0× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	5.94s	64.75s	+990.1% Gemini 4 Argon (High) is 990.1% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$2.00 / $10.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Gemini 4 Argon (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 46.5% more intelligence, 399.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 990.1% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it Gemini 4 Argon (High): 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 4 Argon (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Gemini 4 Argon (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/gemini-4-argon · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/gemini-4-argon?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill