Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash
Claude Opus 4.6 
Gemini 3.6 Flash Verdict
- Claude Opus 4.6 leads on quality: 63.3 vs 60.8.
- Claude Opus 4.6 is stronger in agents & tools, coding, human preference, 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 5.3× faster (194 vs 36 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 63.3 | 60.8 |
| Agents & tools score | 68.8 | – |
| Coding score | 62.4 | 49.8 |
| Composite score | 69.4 | 72.4 |
| Human preference score | 64.9 | – |
| Instruction following score | 53.9 | – |
| Knowledge score | 70.6 | 74.7 |
| Long context score | 65.5 | 66.6 |
| Maths score | 65.7 | 54.8 |
| Multimodal score | 63.6 | 67.8 |
| Reasoning score | 62.6 | – |
| Blended price $/M | $10.00 | $1.50 |
| Output speed | 36 tok/s | 194 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 2.4 s | 16.8 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1.0M |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 94.4% | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | 78.7% | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 19.0% | – |
| Terminal-Bench | 79.8% | – |
| SimpleBench | 67.6% | – |
| Cybench | 93.0% | – |
| Remote Labor Index | 4.2% | – |
| WeirdML | 77.9% | – |
| APEX-Agents | 32.4% | – |
| FrontierCode | 26.6% | 34.4% |
| ProofBench | – | 36.0% |
| GSO-Bench | 33.3% | – |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 155.3 | 154.3 |
| LMArena Text | 1498 | – |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1527 | – |
| LMArena Coding | 1546 | – |
| LMArena WebDev | 1537 | – |
| LMArena Vision | 1311 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 31.9 | 34.3 |
| IFBench | 53.1% | – |
| AA-LCR | 78.0% | 80.0% |
| MMMU-Pro | 75.4% | 83.2% |
| AA-Omniscience | 13.7 | 22.1 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 48.5% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 89.6% | 92.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 39.9% | 40.8% |
| SciCode (AA) | – | 53.4% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 92.1% | – |
| AIME 2026 | – | 96.7% |
| HMMT February 2026 | – | 89.4% |
| MathArena Apex | – | 26.0% |
| HiL-Bench | 38.3% | – |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1223 | – |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 72.4% | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 75.6% | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold) | 75.6% | – |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Claude Opus 4.6 leads on quality: 63.3 vs 60.8. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash for coding?
- Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in coding (62 vs 50 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 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 4.6 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash streams faster: 194 against 36 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1.0M against 1M tokens.