Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) scores 15.5 points higher (39.8 vs 24.3) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1100 vs $653; both premium class). Pick Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Low).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 39.8 | +63.8% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Med… is 63.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $1,100.06 | +68.5% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Med… is 68.5% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.35s | Not reported | — not comparable |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.75 / $3.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 63.8% more intelligence, 68.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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