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

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemini 4 Carbon (High) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-29.

Trade-off
AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier
Intelligence
25.30
Total cost
$499
GoogleGemini 4 Carbon (High)On the frontier
Intelligence
59.40
Total cost
$8240
Verdict

Depends on your budget

Gemini 4 Carbon (High) scores 34.1 points higher (59.4 vs 25.3) but costs 17× as much to run the benchmark ($8240 vs $499; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 4 Carbon (High) when you need intelligence above 25.3, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… when 25.3 is enough.

MetricClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Gemini 4 Carbon (High)Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)25.359.4+134.8% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 2.3× more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)$499.20$8,239.69+1550.6% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 17× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)5.58s105.19s+1785.1% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 1785.1% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)$2.00 / $10.0$4.00 / $20.0
Input modalitiesText, ImageText, Image, Speech, Video

Gemini 4 Carbon (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 134.8% more intelligence, 1550.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1785.1% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive pickerClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats itGemini 4 Carbon (High): what beats it
Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

0204060$10$20$50$100$200$500$1k$2k$5k$10k$20kCost to run the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (USD, log scale)Intelligence IndexBeam 1.0 (Reflection): intelligence 17.70, $250Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 47.00, $6591Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 38.50, $3894Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 49.00, $13266Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 43.00, $4883Claude Fable 5.1 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 49.70, $10065Claude Haiku 5.5 (Max) (Anthropic): intelligence 36.20, $339Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) (Anthropic): intelligence 34.30, $193Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 51.70, $2716Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 34.50, $980Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 58.40, $8910Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 48.10, $2031Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 41.10, $1268Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 54.20, $7981Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 30.30, $679Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 49.60, $2903DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max) (DeepSeek): intelligence 23.10, $1402DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) (DeepSeek): intelligence 32.50, $521Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google): intelligence 11.70, $654Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) (Google): intelligence 30.50, $5764Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) (Google): intelligence 30.00, $4547Gemini 4 Argon (High) (Google): intelligence 50.40, $6103GLM-5.3 (Low) (Z AI): intelligence 23.10, $1219GLM-5.3 (Max) (Z AI): intelligence 31.70, $3496GPT-6 Astra (Low) (OpenAI): intelligence 43.00, $1651GPT-6 Astra (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 56.90, $5661GPT-6 Astra (Medium) (OpenAI): intelligence 51.50, $2638GPT-6 Luna (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 27.80, $136GPT-6 Luna (Non-reasoning) (OpenAI): intelligence 9.40, $53.1GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) (OpenAI): intelligence 23.30, $85.7GPT-6.1 Sol (Low) (OpenAI): intelligence 34.50, $238GPT-6.1 Terra (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 51.00, $972GPT-6.1 Terra (Non-reasoning) (OpenAI): intelligence 30.40, $213GPT-6.1 Terra (Xhigh) (OpenAI): intelligence 45.00, $400Grok 4.7 (High) (SpaceXAI): intelligence 35.00, $4722Grok 4.7 (Low) (SpaceXAI): intelligence 30.90, $2169Grok 4.7 (Xhigh) (SpaceXAI): intelligence 34.30, $5784Inkling (Xhigh) (Thinking Machines): intelligence 12.50, $1237Inkling Small (Thinking Machines): intelligence 12.90, $225Kimi K3.1 Pro (Kimi): intelligence 46.00, $3153Ling 3.1 Flash 1019 (InclusionAI): intelligence 29.50, $2009MiMo-V2.6-Pro (Xiaomi): intelligence 29.90, $221MiniMax-M3 (MiniMax): intelligence 18.70, $878MiniMax-M3.1-Flash (MiniMax): intelligence 28.90, $358Mistral Large 4 Preview (Mistral): intelligence 25.30, $3922Muse Glimmer (High) (Meta): intelligence 6.30, $182Muse Spark 1.3 (Max) (Meta): intelligence 36.40, $1906Muse Spark Open (Xhigh) (Meta): intelligence 24.70, $1697Muse Wonder (Max) (Meta): intelligence 43.30, $5414Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) (NVIDIA): intelligence 11.80, $1542Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (NVIDIA): intelligence 13.60, $482Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) (Alibaba): intelligence 20.10, $2390Qwen3.8 Max (0902) (Alibaba): intelligence 33.60, $6354Step 5 Preview (StepFun): intelligence 28.50, $1644GPT-6 Luna (Low) (OpenAI): intelligence 9.70, $9.09GPT-6 Luna (Medium) (OpenAI): intelligence 18.30, $39.5Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) (Anthropic): intelligence 18.60, $39.6GPT-6 Luna (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 21.40, $62.6Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) (Anthropic): intelligence 24.60, $72.7MiMo-V2.6-Flash (Xiaomi): intelligence 26.70, $106GPT-6.1 Terra (Low) (OpenAI): intelligence 29.20, $111Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) (Anthropic): intelligence 29.60, $121GPT-6.1 Terra (Medium) (OpenAI): intelligence 38.10, $190GPT-6.1 Terra (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 42.30, $267GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) (OpenAI): intelligence 46.10, $389GPT-6.1 Sol (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 50.20, $573GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) (OpenAI): intelligence 52.30, $718GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 54.50, $1124GPT-6 Astra (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 54.80, $3204GPT-6 Astra (Xhigh) (OpenAI): intelligence 55.30, $3746Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 57.00, $4766Gemini 4 Carbon (High) (Google): intelligence 59.40, $8240Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 25.30, $499Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Gemini 4 Carbon (High)GPT-6 Luna (Low)
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Gemini 4 Carbon (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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