Claude Opus 5.5 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash

  • Claude Opus 5.5 rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1516 against 1480.
  • Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper: $0.75 / $3.75 per million input / output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
  • On the 5 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Claude Opus 5.5 wins 4 and Gemini 3.6 Flash wins 1 (Claude Opus 5.5: Vibe Code Bench, Tax Agent Bench, Legal Research Bench).
LMArena text rating over time
14601468147514831490Jul 21Aug 13Sep 5Sep 28Oct 22
LatestGemini 3.6 Flash 1480

Side by side

Models (2/6)
  • Claude Opus 5.5
  • Gemini 3.6 Flash
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Gemini 3.6 Flash
The model
LabAnthropicGoogle
Released2026-09-222026-07-21
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M1M
Input, per 1M tokens$4$0.75
Output, per 1M tokens$20$3.75
LMArena, people’s votes
LMArena TextMillions of people compare two anonymous models side by side and vote for the better answer1516#2 of 3511480#20 of 351
LMArena WebDevPeople ask two anonymous models to build the same web app, try both and vote for the better one1807#1 of 1241538#49 of 124
LMArena VisionSide-by-side votes on prompts that include an image1321#2 of 1461299#20 of 146
LMArena CodingLMArena’s text votes on prompts that ask for code1545#1 of 3461491#34 of 346
LMArena MathLMArena’s text votes on math prompts1518#6 of 3391507#11 of 339
LMArena Creative writingLMArena’s text votes on stories, poems and other creative writing1534#1 of 3491466#21 of 349
LMArena Hard promptsLMArena’s text votes on the hardest prompts1536#2 of 3511486#25 of 351
LMArena Instruction followingLMArena’s text votes on prompts with specific instructions to follow1539#1 of 3511467#31 of 351
Vals AI, overall
Vals IndexVals AI’s headline score70.18%#2 of 27—
Vals AI, coding
Terminal-Bench 4.0Frontier-difficulty tasks an agent completes in a real terminal65.15%#1 of 55—
SWE-benchReal GitHub issues from open-source projects—79.60%#25 of 85
Vibe Code BenchBuilding complete web apps from a plain-language brief, graded on whether the app works90.29%#5 of 11564.00%#50 of 115
Code MigrationRewriting working programs in a new language, graded on whether the new program still passes its tests81.01%#2 of 28—
LiveCodeBenchFresh competitive programming problems, collected after models’ training cut-offs to avoid contamination—88.08%#8 of 143
Vals AI, finance
Finance AgentThe core tasks of a financial analyst, done as an agent with research tools67.85%#1 of 31—
Finance IndexVals AI’s composite of finance tasks65.59%#1 of 31—
Tax Agent BenchAgentic research into US corporate tax questions45.57%#3 of 7618.04%#53 of 76
Vals AI, law
Legal IndexVals AI’s composite of legal tasks72.33%#7 of 28—
Legal Research BenchAgentic US legal research50.48%#7 of 8525.00%#60 of 85
Vals AI, medicine
MedCodeAssigning the right medical billing codes from clinical notes49.80%#19 of 10753.15%#11 of 107
Vals AI, reasoning
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level questions in biology, physics and chemistry that experts answer well and search does not—93.43%#7 of 138
MMLU-ProHarder, reasoning-focused multiple choice across 14 subjects, from law to engineering—89.28%#13 of 138
MMMUCollege-level questions that need both an image and text—88.38%#7 of 93
Terminal-Bench ScienceExpert-written scientific research workflows, run by an agent in a terminal47.14%#3 of 424.29%#28 of 42

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Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 5.5 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?

Claude Opus 5.5 rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1516 against 1480. Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper: $0.75 / $3.75 per million input / output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5. On the 5 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Claude Opus 5.5 wins 4 and Gemini 3.6 Flash wins 1 (Claude Opus 5.5: Vibe Code Bench, Tax Agent Bench, Legal Research Bench).

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?

Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper: $0.75 / $3.75 per million input / output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.

Sources

Every number on this page comes from these sources; models without a published number show none. Download the data. Cite as “Nexus Explorer, nexus.inc/models”.