Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash
Full profiles: Claude Opus 4.6 (Anthropic) and Gemini 3.6 Flash (Google): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 9 sources
As of 26 Oct 2026, Claude Opus 4.6 (high) and Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) are neck and neck on quality (62.7 vs 62.0 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±3.8 margin of error), and Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) costs 6.7× less, which makes it the better buy for most workloads. Gemini 3.6 Flash (high)'s current price runs until 31 Dec 2026; from 1 Jan 2027 Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) costs 3.3× less ($3.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
Claude Opus 4.6 benchmarks high Anthropic
Gemini 3.6 Flash benchmarks high GoogleOpen in the comparison toolWhich to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Claude Opus 4.6 | 63 vs 57 category score; Arena WebDev 1546 vs 1538 | Medium |
| Maths | Claude Opus 4.6 | 64 vs 60 category score; Arena Maths 1517 vs 1504 | Medium |
| Reasoning | Claude Opus 4.6 | 66 vs 63 category score; ARC-AGI-2 69.2% vs 60.4% | Medium |
| Images and other media | Claude Opus 4.6 | 67 vs 65 category score; Arena Vision 1316 vs 1299 | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | Claude Opus 4.6 | 70 vs 68 on Arena votes | Medium |
| Lowest cost | Gemini 3.6 Flash | $1.50 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.060 vs $0.400; from 1 Jan 2027: $3.00 vs $10.00 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Claude Opus 4.6 | 1.2 s (Claude Opus 4.6 (high)) vs 17.7 s (Gemini 3.6 Flash (high)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high) and Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) are neck and neck on quality (62.7 vs 62.0, within the ±3.8 margin).
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high) is stronger in coding, human preference, maths, multimodal, reasoning.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) is stronger in agents & tools, composite, knowledge, long context.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) is 6.7× cheaper ($1.50 vs $10.00 per 1M blended) until 31 Dec 2026, then $3.00 vs $10.00 from 1 Jan 2027.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) streams 5.0× faster (197 vs 39 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | |
| Released | 5 Feb 2026 | 21 Jul 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Compared at | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500 | $0.750 / $3.75 / $0.075 |
| Announced price change | None announced | $1.50 / $7.50 / $0.150 from 1 Jan 2027 |
Limits, availability and announced prices from the vendors' own pages: ai.google.dev pricing (checked 20 Oct 2026). Everything else is from the day's data.
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 65.5 | 62.6 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Coding | 62.7 | 57.1 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Agents & tools | – | 59.2 | not comparable |
| Maths | 63.5 | 59.5 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Knowledge | – | 65.6 | not comparable |
| Human preference | 70.0 | 67.5 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Multimodal | 66.6 | 65.4 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Long context | – | 65.0 | not comparable |
| Composite | – | 67.5 | not comparable |
Where sources disagree
Across the 21 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.6 leads 19, Gemini 3.6 Flash leads 2. Independent sources split: Claude Opus 4.6 leads on Arena Text; Gemini 3.6 Flash leads on AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2.
| Overall index | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 62.7 | 62.0 | neck and neck |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | 26.4† | 34.0 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| Arena Text | 1503 | 1483 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page; suite cost is what Artificial Analysis paid to run its whole Intelligence Index.
| Measure | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens, until 31 Dec 2026 | $10.00 | $1.50 |
| Input / output per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 | $0.750 / $3.75 |
| Blended price per 1M from 1 Jan 2027 | $10.00 | $3.00 |
| Input / output per 1M from 1 Jan 2027 | $5.00 / $25.00 | $1.50 / $7.50 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.500 | $0.075 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0095 | $0.0014 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.075 | $0.011 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.068 | $0.010 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.400 | $0.060 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.015 | $0.0023 |
| Cost to run a full benchmark suite | – | $1.60 |
| Output speed | 39 tok/s | 197 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 1.2 s | 17.7 s |
| Time to a complete answer | – | 20.2 s |
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 4.6 (high) scores 62.7 and takes 1 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) scores 62.5 in 1 s, Claude Opus 4.6 scores 62.5 in 1 s. Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) scores 62.0 and takes 18 s to its first answer token; Gemini 3.6 Flash scores 49.5 in 1 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
135 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 62.7 | 62.0 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 62.7 | 57.1 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | 70.0 | 67.5 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 63.5 | 59.5 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | 66.6 | 65.4 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 65.5 | 62.6 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | – | 59.2 |
| Composite score | BenchLeader | – | 67.5 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | – | 65.6 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | – | 65.0 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $10.00 | $1.50 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 39 tok/s | 197 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 1.2 s | 17.7 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 90.5%† | 94.1% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | Scale AI / CAIS | 19.0%† | – |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 67.6%† | – |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1530 | 1501 |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 88.7% | 85.2% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 89.6%† | 92.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 39.9%† | 40.8% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 89.7%† | 93.4% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | Kagi LLM Benchmark | 72.4%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 94.0% | 91.2% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 69.2% | 60.4% |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 0.5%† | – |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 12.6%† | 10.6% |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 21.0%† | 40.0% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 15.0%† | 30.0% |
| CL-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 20.7%† | – |
| CL-bench Life | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 17.0% | – |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 55.8%† | 44.9% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 91.2%† | 95.5% |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 63.4%† | 65.9%† |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 78.7%† | – |
| SciCode | SciCode | – | 53.4% |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 78.0% | 56.1% |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 26.6%† | 34.4%† |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | 41.2% | – |
Show all 135 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.6 (high) | Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1547 | 1518 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1546 | 1538 |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 78.2% | 77.9% |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 84.7%† | 88.1% |
| IOI | Vals AI | – | 35.1% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 78.2%† | 79.6% |
| SWE-Bench Pro | Scale AI SEAL | 51.9%† | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | SWE-bench | 75.6%† | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold) | SWE-bench | 75.6%† | – |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | – | 30.9% |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | – | 0.0% |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 57.6%† | 64.0% |
| SWE-Bench Pro (private) | Scale AI SEAL | 51.9%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | 33.3%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Refactoring | Scale AI SEAL | 35.6%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | 36.7%† | – |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 46.7% |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 996.5† | 715.5 |
| AlgoTune | AlgoTune | 1.5 | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 7.1% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 77.5% |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 79.8%† | – |
| Cybench | Cybench | 93.0%† | – |
| Remote Labor Index | Scale AI / CAIS | 4.2%† | – |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 46.3%† | 46.9%† |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 49.0% | 43.4% |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | Artificial Analysis | 46.2%† | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 92.1%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 73.8% |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 76.8%† | – |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 38.3%† | – |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 27.3%† | – |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 29.9% |
| APEX-Agents (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 33.0%† | – |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | – | 45.4% |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | – | 56.3% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | – | 3.3% |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | – | 25.0% |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | – | 18.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 58.4%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | – | 4.3% |
| DeepResearch Bench | DeepResearch Bench | 55.3% | – |
| METR Time Horizons | METR | 78.9%† | – |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 44.1%† | – |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 8017.6† | – |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | – | 53.0% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 17.4% |
| FACTS Search | – | 68.2%† | |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 66.0%† | 59.0% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 26.8%† | 21.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 94.4%† | 94.2% |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 50.0%† | 36.0%† |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 89.3% | 86.4% |
| AIME (Vals) | Vals AI | 95.6%† | – |
| AIME 2026 | MathArena | 96.7% | 96.7%† |
| HMMT February 2026 | MathArena | 96.2% | 89.4%† |
| USAMO 2026 | MathArena | 47.0% | – |
| MathArena Apex | MathArena | 34.5% | 26.0%† |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1517 | 1504 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 47.0%† | 66.2% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 69.9% | 63.0% |
| AA-Omniscience | Artificial Analysis | 13.7† | 22.1 |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 89.1%† | 89.3% |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 85.3%† | 86.7% |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 67.0%† | 63.3% |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 76.0%† | 74.9% |
| MedQA | Vals AI | 95.4%† | – |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | 53.3%† | – |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | 52.3%† | – |
| MultiNRC | Scale AI SEAL | 57.1%† | – |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | – | 58.5% |
| CaseLaw v2 | Vals AI | 62.1%† | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | – | 65.4% |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 48.2%† | 53.1% |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 86.7%† | 79.7% |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 56.6% |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | 27.7%† | – |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 12.7%† | – |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 14.0% |
| AA-Omniscience: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 47.0%† | 50.0% |
| AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 37.2%† | 44.4% |
| Global-MMLU-Lite (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 92.2%† | – |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 83.3% | 83.9% |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 63.3% | 75.4% |
| IFBench | Artificial Analysis | 53.1%† | – |
| MultiChallenge | Scale AI SEAL | 37.1%† | – |
| TutorBench | Scale AI SEAL | 53.7%† | – |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1511 | 1473 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1503 | 1483 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | 1213† | – |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1500 | 1471 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1516 | 1488 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1521 | 1485 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1316 | 1299 |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 75.4%† | 83.2% |
| VISTA | Scale AI SEAL | 46.1%† | – |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 83.9%† | 88.4% |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 68.5%† | 67.6% |
| SAGE | Vals AI | 51.6%† | 48.7% |
| VTB | Scale AI SEAL | 27.5%† | – |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 31.2%† |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR | Artificial Analysis | 78.0%† | 80.0% |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1495 | 1453 |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | – | 10.0% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 155.7† | 154.5† |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 74.5% | 73.6% |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 31.9† | 34.0 |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | – | 65.1% |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 13.0%† | – |
| MASK | Scale AI SEAL | 85.4%† | – |
Data as of 2026-10-26. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
What changed
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: list price moves to $1.50 / $7.50 per 1M input / output tokens (announced).
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high): 1 new result (Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1).
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high): 1 score revision.
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high): BenchLeader Index 60.4 → 62.9.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high): BenchLeader Index 61.2 → 62.1.
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high): 1 new result (USAMO 2026).
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high): 3 new results (AutomationBench, GDP.pdf (AA), MLCR).
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high): BenchLeader Index 60.6 → 61.2.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high): 1 score revision.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (high): 1 score revision.
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Muse Wonder Full
- Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Muse Wonder Full
- Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Claude Fable 5.1
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 3.5 Flash
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high) and Gemini 3.6 Flash (high) are neck and neck on quality (62.7 vs 62.0, within the ±3.8 margin). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; the two are within the margin of error as of 2026-10-26, so check the category scores for your use.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.6 Flash, and will that change?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper today: $1.50 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. Yes, that changes: Gemini 3.6 Flash's list price changes on 1 Jan 2027, and from then Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper ($3.00 vs $10.00 blended).
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash for coding?
- Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in coding (63 vs 57 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena WebDev, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 1546 for Claude Opus 4.6 against 1538 for Gemini 3.6 Flash.
- Which is better for long documents?
- Both take about 1M tokens: Claude Opus 4.6 1,000,000, Gemini 3.6 Flash 1,048,576.
- Which has lower latency?
- Claude Opus 4.6 (high) answers first: 1.2 s against 17.7 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash streams faster: 197 against 39 output tokens per second.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Across the 21 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.6 leads 19, Gemini 3.6 Flash leads 2. Independent sources split: Claude Opus 4.6 leads on Arena Text; Gemini 3.6 Flash leads on AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2.
- When was Gemini 3.6 Flash released?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash was released on 21 Jul 2026.