Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Gemini 3.5 Flash (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) 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 3.5 Flash (High) scores 4.5 points higher (32.6 vs 28.1) but costs 3.5× as much to run the benchmark ($4222 vs $1218; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) when you need intelligence above 28.1, and Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when 28.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 32.6 | +16.0% Gemini 3.5 Flash (Hig… is 16.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $4,222.12 | +246.6% Gemini 3.5 Flash (Hig… is 3.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.58s | 16.52s | +92.5% Gemini 3.5 Flash (Hig… is 92.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $1.50 / $9.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 16.0% more intelligence, 246.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 92.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Gemini 3.5 Flash (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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