Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, 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 2026-10-28.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 4 Carbon (High) scores 9.8 points higher (59.4 vs 49.6) but costs 2.8× as much to run the benchmark ($8240 vs $2903; both flagship class). Pick Gemini 4 Carbon (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb….
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) | Gemini 4 Carbon (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 49.6 | 59.4 | +19.8% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 19.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,902.50 | $8,239.69 | +183.9% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 2.8× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 32.18s | 105.72s | +228.5% Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is 228.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 4 Carbon (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback): 19.8% more intelligence, 183.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 228.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 54.50 for $1124.
- Gemini 4 Carbon (High) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)Gemini 4 Carbon (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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