Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 4 Hydrogen
Full profiles: Claude Opus 4.6 (Anthropic) and Gemini 4 Hydrogen (Google): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 9 sources
As of 13 Nov 2026, Claude Opus 4.6 and Gemini 4 Hydrogen are neck and neck on quality (62.6 vs 63.4 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±3.5 margin), and Gemini 4 Hydrogen is 3.3× cheaper at $3.00 vs $10.00 per 1M tokens blended. Choose Claude Opus 4.6 for reasoning (76 vs 70) and fast first answers (1.1 s vs 16.4 s); choose Gemini 4 Hydrogen for knowledge (69 vs 62), coding (69 vs 64), and maths (68 vs 65), where it also streams 3×+ faster.
Key facts (as of 13 Nov 2026)
- Claude Opus 4.6 scores 62.6 on the BenchLeader Index and Gemini 4 Hydrogen scores 63.4 (BenchLeader, 13 Nov 2026).
- Claude Opus 4.6 costs $10.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 13 Nov 2026).
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen costs $3.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 13 Nov 2026).
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen streams 3×+ faster than Claude Opus 4.6 (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 13 Nov 2026).
Claude Opus 4.6 benchmarks thinking Anthropic
Gemini 4 Hydrogen benchmarks high GoogleAdd a third modelWhich 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 | Gemini 4 Hydrogen | 69 vs 64 category score | Medium |
| Maths | Gemini 4 Hydrogen | 68 vs 65 category score | Medium |
| Reasoning | Claude Opus 4.6 | 76 vs 70 category score | Medium |
| Knowledge | Gemini 4 Hydrogen | 69 vs 62 category score | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | – | Only Gemini 4 Hydrogen has an Arena rating (68 category score) | Not comparable |
| Lowest cost | Gemini 4 Hydrogen | $3.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.120 vs $0.400 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Claude Opus 4.6 | 1.1 s (Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking)) vs 16.4 s (Gemini 4 Hydrogen (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 (thinking) and Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) are neck and neck on quality (62.6 vs 63.4, within the ±3.5 margin).
- Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) is stronger in reasoning.
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) is stronger in coding, knowledge, maths.
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) is 3.3× cheaper ($3.00 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) streams 4.9× faster (180 vs 37 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 4 Hydrogen |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | |
| Released | 5 Feb 2026 | 12 Nov 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Compared at | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500 | $1.50 / $7.50 / $0.075 |
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 (thinking) | Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 75.6 | 69.6 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Coding | 63.9 | 68.8 | Gemini 4 Hydrogen |
| Agents & tools | – | 61.9 | not comparable |
| Maths | 65.3 | 67.8 | Gemini 4 Hydrogen |
| Knowledge | 62.3 | 68.5 | Gemini 4 Hydrogen |
| Human preference | – | 68.2 | not comparable |
On one chart
Each domain on the index's own scale, where 50 is an average model. Click a domain to see the benchmarks behind it. Pick up to 5 models from the list.
Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Agents & tools, Instruction following, Long context, Multimodal, Human preference.
Where sources disagree
Across the 0 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.6 leads 0, Gemini 4 Hydrogen leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 4.6 ahead.
| Overall index | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 62.6 | 63.4 | neck and neck |
| Arena Text | 1503† | 1490 | 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. Cost, tokens and time per benchmark task are measured: Artificial Analysis’ averages over its whole Intelligence Index run.
| Measure | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $10.00 | $3.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 | $1.50 / $7.50 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.500 | $0.075 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0095 | $0.0029 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.075 | $0.022 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.068 | $0.020 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.400 | $0.120 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.015 | $0.0045 |
| Agentic coding session, input mostly cached | $0.198 | $0.056 |
| Cost per benchmark task (AA Index) | – | $1.87 |
| Output tokens per task (AA Index) | – | 85k |
| Of which reasoning | – | 48k |
| Time per task (AA Index) | – | 8 min |
| Output speed | 37 tok/s | 180 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 1.1 s | 16.4 s |
| Time to a complete answer | – | 63.3 s |
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) scores 62.6 and takes 1 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 4.6 (high) scores 62.5 in 1 s, Claude Opus 4.6 scores 62.1 in 1 s. Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) scores 63.4 and takes 16 s to its first answer token. 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
140 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 (thinking) | Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 62.6 | 63.4 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 63.9 | 68.8 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 62.3 | 68.5 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 65.3 | 67.8 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 75.6 | 69.6 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | – | 61.9 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | – | 68.2 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $10.00 | $3.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 37 tok/s | 180 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 1.1 s | 16.4 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 90.5%† | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam | Scale AI / CAIS | 19.0%† | – |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 67.6%† | – |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1526† | 1514 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | – | 88.6%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 88.7%† | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 84.0%† | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 19.1%† | – |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 54.9% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 89.7% | – |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.6% | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 94.0%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 69.2%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 0.5%† | – |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 2.8%† | – |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 61.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 21.0%† | – |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 15.0%† | – |
| CL-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 20.7%† | – |
| CL-bench Life | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 13.6%† | – |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 55.8%† | – |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 91.2%† | – |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 63.1%† | – |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 78.7%† | – |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 77.9%† | – |
Show all 140 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 26.6%† | – |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | 33.3%† | – |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1547† | 1518 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1537† | 1704 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | – | 78.5%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 78.2%† | – |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 84.7% | – |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 78.2% | – |
| 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%† | – |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 53.5% | 87.8%† |
| 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%† | – |
| MirrorCode | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 33.3%† | – |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 996.5† | – |
| AlgoTune | AlgoTune | 1.5† | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 54.0% |
| Design Arena Website | Design Arena | 1278 | 1316† |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 36.3% |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 79.8%† | 56.4% |
| Cybench | Cybench | 93.0%† | – |
| Remote Labor Index | Scale AI / CAIS | 4.2%† | – |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 46.3%† | – |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | – | 61.8%† |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | – | 77.1%† |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 49.0%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | Artificial Analysis | 48.5%† | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 84.8%† | – |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 76.8%† | – |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 38.3%† | – |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 27.3%† | – |
| APEX-Agents (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 33.0%† | – |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | – | 65.1%† |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 11.3%† |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | – | 53.9%† |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | – | 52.3%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 58.4% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 54.0%† |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | 1222† | – |
| 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 | – | 74.4% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 30.0% |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 1497 |
| Design Arena Agentic | Design Arena | 1189† | – |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 41.4% |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 66.0%† | – |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 26.8%† | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 94.4%† | – |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 50.0%† | – |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 89.3%† | – |
| AIME (Vals) | Vals AI | 95.6% | – |
| AIME 2026 | MathArena | 96.7%† | – |
| HMMT February 2026 | MathArena | 96.2%† | – |
| USAMO 2026 | MathArena | 47.0%† | – |
| MathArena Apex | MathArena | 34.5%† | – |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1503† | 1495 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 47.0%† | – |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | – | 83.2%† |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | – | 86.8%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 69.9%† | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 43.7 |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 89.1% | – |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 85.3% | – |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 67.0% | – |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 76.0% | – |
| MedQA | Vals AI | 95.4% | – |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | 53.3%† | – |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | 52.3%† | – |
| MultiNRC | Scale AI SEAL | 48.3%† | – |
| CaseLaw v2 | Vals AI | 62.1% | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 75.8%† |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 49.1% | – |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 86.1% | – |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | 27.7%† | – |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 12.7%† | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | – | 48.2% |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | – | 91.3% |
| Global-MMLU-Lite (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 92.2%† | – |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 83.3%† | – |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 63.3%† | – |
| IFBench | Artificial Analysis | 44.6%† | – |
| MultiChallenge | Scale AI SEAL | 56.0%† | – |
| TutorBench | Scale AI SEAL | 53.5%† | – |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1499† | 1503 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1496† | 1490 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | 1210† | – |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1478† | 1492 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1509† | 1476 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1517† | 1514 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1312† | – |
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | – | 77.3%† |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 72.5%† | – |
| VISTA | Scale AI SEAL | 45.5%† | – |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 83.9% | – |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 68.5% | – |
| VTB | Scale AI SEAL | 27.5% | – |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 67.0%† | – |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1496† | – |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | – | 21.1%† |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 156.3† | – |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | – | 77.0%† |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 74.5%† | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | – | 50.8 |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 26.4† | – |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | 274.5† | – |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | – | 68.5† |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | – | 66.1%† |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 20.5%† | – |
| MASK | Scale AI SEAL | 96.3%† | – |
Data as of 2026-11-13. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
What changed
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high): 10 new results (Arena Text, Arena Hard Prompts, Arena Coding…).
- Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking): BenchLeader Index 62.1 → 62.6.
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.2
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen vs Claude Fable 5.2
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen vs GPT-6 Astra
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.1
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 4 Hydrogen: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Gemini 4 Hydrogen?
- Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) and Gemini 4 Hydrogen (high) are neck and neck on quality (62.6 vs 63.4, within the ±3.5 margin). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; the two are within the margin of error as of 13 Nov 2026, so check the category scores for your use.
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 4 Hydrogen: which is cheaper, and will that change?
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen is cheaper today: $3.00 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 4 Hydrogen better for coding?
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen scores higher in coding (69 vs 64 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 4 Hydrogen?
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen streams 3×+ faster (180 vs 37 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
- Which is better for long documents?
- Both take about 1M tokens: Claude Opus 4.6 1,000,000, Gemini 4 Hydrogen 1,048,576.
More questions (2)
- Which has lower latency?
- Claude Opus 4.6 answers first: 1.1 s against 16.4 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.
- When was Gemini 4 Hydrogen released?
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen was released on 12 Nov 2026.