Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash

Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic · Balanced · Proprietary
$4.40/1M · 1M ctx
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Google · Balanced · Proprietary
$1.65/1M · 1.0M ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for money
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
Sonnet 5.5
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Maker
Anthropic
Google
Blended price / 1M
$4.40
$1.65
Input / output
$2.00 in · $10 out / 1M tokens
$0.75 in · $3.75 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1M
1.0M
Open weights
No
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
9.8
9.1
Agentic Ability
9.8
8.9
Speed
8.4
9.2
Value for money
8.8
8.8
Reliability
9.4
8.9

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Sonnet 5.5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose Claude Sonnet 5.5 if you want the everyday default for coding agents, escalating to Opus 5.5 only for the hardest tasks. Choose Gemini 3.8 Flash if you want high-throughput agents and Gemini CLI users who want speed and big context.

In our editorial scoring, Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and reliability), while Gemini 3.8 Flash leads in 1. On price, Claude Sonnet 5.5 runs about $4.40 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; Gemini 3.8 Flash is about $1.65 and proprietary.

Where Sonnet 5.5 falls short
  • Artificial Analysis flags it as very verbose, which adds output tokens
  • Released September 2026, so its long-run track record is still short
Full Sonnet 5.5 breakdown →
Where Gemini 3.8 Flash falls short
  • Price doubles to $1.50/$7.50 on January 1, 2027
  • Weak on long terminal tasks (19.1% on Terminal-Bench 4.0)
Full Gemini 3.8 Flash breakdown →

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