Claude Opus 4.5 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash
Verdict
- Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking) and Gemini 3.6 Flash are level on quality (60.7 vs 60.8).
- Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, instruction following, maths, reasoning.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is stronger in composite, knowledge, long context, multimodal.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is 6.7× cheaper ($1.50 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- Gemini 3.6 Flash streams 4.3× faster (194 vs 45 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking) | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 60.7 | 60.8 |
| Agents & tools score | 74.6 | – |
| Coding score | 56.4 | 49.8 |
| Composite score | 65.8 | 72.4 |
| Instruction following score | 54.8 | – |
| Knowledge score | 61.0 | 74.7 |
| Long context score | 65.2 | 66.6 |
| Maths score | 64.0 | 54.8 |
| Multimodal score | 58.0 | 67.8 |
| Reasoning score | 58.6 | – |
| Blended price $/M | $10.00 | $1.50 |
| Output speed | 45 tok/s | 194 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 17.3 s | 16.8 s |
| Context window | 200k | 1.0M |
| FrontierCode | – | 34.4% |
| ProofBench | – | 36.0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | – | 154.3 |
| AA Intelligence Index | 29.1 | 34.3 |
| IFBench | 58.0% | – |
| AA-LCR | 77.3% | 80.0% |
| MMMU-Pro | 74.0% | 83.2% |
| AA-Omniscience | 14 | 22.1 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 47.0% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 86.6% | 92.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 30.1% | 40.8% |
| SciCode (AA) | – | 53.4% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 89.5% | – |
| AIME (Vals) | 95.4% | – |
| LiveCodeBench | 83.7% | – |
| MMLU-Pro | 87.3% | – |
| IOI | 20.3% | – |
| LegalBench | 84.6% | – |
| CorpFin | 65.1% | – |
| TaxEval | 74.9% | – |
| MedQA | 95.9% | – |
| MGSM | 95.2% | – |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 76.4% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 85.9% | – |
| AIME 2026 | – | 96.7% |
| HMMT February 2026 | – | 89.4% |
| MathArena Apex | – | 26.0% |
| MultiChallenge | 59.0% | – |
| PRBench Finance | 46.2% | – |
| PRBench Legal | 44.2% | – |
| VISTA | 46.4% | – |
| MultiNRC | 48.6% | – |
| TutorBench | 51.2% | – |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 80.2% | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 80.0% | – |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 37.6% | – |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Opus 4.5 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.5 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Claude Opus 4.5 (thinking) and Gemini 3.6 Flash are level on quality (60.7 vs 60.8). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Gemini 3.6 Flash is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Opus 4.5 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash for coding?
- Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher in coding (56 vs 50 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper: $1.50 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.5 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash streams faster: 194 against 45 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1.0M against 200k tokens.