Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) 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 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)
Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Max): 4.2% more intelligence, 84.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) | Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 38.2 | 39.8 | +4.2% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Med… is 4.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,998.25 | $1,100.06 | −84.3% Gemini 3.8 Flash (Med… is 84.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 183.62s | 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 |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- 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 (Max)Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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