Claude Opus 5 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash
Claude Opus 5 
Gemini 3.6 Flash Verdict
- Claude Opus 5 leads on quality: 70.0 vs 60.8.
- Claude Opus 5 is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, human preference, maths, multimodal, reasoning.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is stronger in knowledge, long context.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is 6.7× cheaper ($1.50 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- Gemini 3.6 Flash streams 3.8× faster (194 vs 51 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 70.0 | 60.8 |
| Agents & tools score | 71.5 | – |
| Coding score | 74.5 | 49.8 |
| Composite score | 93.1 | 72.4 |
| Human preference score | 78.2 | – |
| Knowledge score | 70.6 | 74.7 |
| Long context score | 66.2 | 66.6 |
| Maths score | 67.1 | 54.8 |
| Multimodal score | 69.4 | 67.8 |
| Reasoning score | 71.5 | – |
| Blended price $/M | $10.00 | $1.50 |
| Output speed | 51 tok/s | 194 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 93.0 s | 16.8 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1.0M |
| GPQA Diamond | 92.9% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 97.8% | – |
| SimpleBench | 80.6% | – |
| WeirdML | 86.3% | – |
| FrontierCode | – | 34.4% |
| ProofBench | – | 36.0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 162.6 | 154.3 |
| AA Intelligence Index | 50.7 | 34.3 |
| AA-LCR | 79.3% | 80.0% |
| MMMU-Pro | 84.7% | 83.2% |
| AA-Omniscience | 37.1 | 22.1 |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 93.2% | 92.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 54.9% | 40.8% |
| SciCode (AA) | 56.4% | 53.4% |
| LiveCodeBench | 89.0% | – |
| MMLU-Pro | 91.6% | – |
| IOI | 91.7% | – |
| LegalBench | 87.0% | – |
| CorpFin | 73.2% | – |
| TaxEval | 75.1% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 84.6% | – |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 97.0% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 93.4% | – |
| Vals Index | 67.2 | – |
| AIME 2026 | – | 96.7% |
| HMMT February 2026 | – | 89.4% |
| MathArena Apex | – | 26.0% |
| HiL-Bench | 57.0% | – |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1385 | – |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Opus 5 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash: questions
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Claude Opus 5 leads on quality: 70.0 vs 60.8. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 5 is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash for coding?
- Claude Opus 5 scores higher in coding (75 vs 50 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 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 5 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash streams faster: 194 against 51 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1.0M against 1M tokens.