Claude Opus 5 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash

  • Claude Opus 5 rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1508 against 1498.
  • Gemini 3.8 Flash is cheaper: $0.82 / $4.13 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 5.
  • On the 11 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Claude Opus 5 wins 9 and Gemini 3.8 Flash wins 2 (Claude Opus 5: Terminal-Bench 4.0, SWE-bench, Vibe Code Bench).

Side by side

Models (2/6)
  • Claude Opus 5
  • Gemini 3.8 Flash
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Gemini 3.8 Flash
The model
LabAnthropicGoogle
Released2026-07-242026-09-02
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M1M
Input, per 1M tokens$5$0.82
Output, per 1M tokens$25$4.13
LMArena, people’s votes
LMArena TextMillions of people compare two anonymous models side by side and vote for the better answer1508#4 of 3511498#8 of 351
LMArena WebDevPeople ask two anonymous models to build the same web app, try both and vote for the better one1691#9 of 1241585#36 of 124
LMArena VisionSide-by-side votes on prompts that include an image1320#3 of 1461315#7 of 146
LMArena CodingLMArena’s text votes on prompts that ask for code1533#4 of 3461508#17 of 346
LMArena MathLMArena’s text votes on math prompts1533#2 of 3391532#4 of 339
LMArena Creative writingLMArena’s text votes on stories, poems and other creative writing1495#5 of 3491489#8 of 349
LMArena Hard promptsLMArena’s text votes on the hardest prompts1527#4 of 3511509#9 of 351
LMArena Instruction followingLMArena’s text votes on prompts with specific instructions to follow1518#5 of 3511492#11 of 351
Vals AI, overall
Vals IndexVals AI’s headline score—55.95%#15 of 27
Vals AI, coding
Terminal-Bench 4.0Frontier-difficulty tasks an agent completes in a real terminal53.53%#9 of 5519.70%#31 of 55
SWE-benchReal GitHub issues from open-source projects97.00%#1 of 8580.00%#23 of 85
Vibe Code BenchBuilding complete web apps from a plain-language brief, graded on whether the app works88.40%#9 of 11578.65%#29 of 115
Code MigrationRewriting working programs in a new language, graded on whether the new program still passes its tests—38.65%#22 of 28
LiveCodeBenchFresh competitive programming problems, collected after models’ training cut-offs to avoid contamination89.03%#4 of 14389.48%#3 of 143
Vals AI, finance
Finance AgentThe core tasks of a financial analyst, done as an agent with research tools—65.76%#5 of 31
Finance IndexVals AI’s composite of finance tasks—60.46%#9 of 31
Tax Agent BenchAgentic research into US corporate tax questions45.55%#4 of 7632.12%#21 of 76
Vals AI, law
Legal IndexVals AI’s composite of legal tasks—69.78%#14 of 28
Legal Research BenchAgentic US legal research55.29%#2 of 8538.94%#34 of 85
Vals AI, medicine
MedCodeAssigning the right medical billing codes from clinical notes63.57%#1 of 10748.13%#31 of 107
Vals AI, reasoning
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level questions in biology, physics and chemistry that experts answer well and search does not93.43%#8 of 13894.44%#4 of 138
MMLU-ProHarder, reasoning-focused multiple choice across 14 subjects, from law to engineering91.59%#2 of 13890.22%#5 of 138
MMMUCollege-level questions that need both an image and text89.88%#2 of 9389.08%#4 of 93
Terminal-Bench ScienceExpert-written scientific research workflows, run by an agent in a terminal27.14%#9 of 428.57%#19 of 42

Add models in the compare tool.

Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

Claude Opus 5 rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1508 against 1498. Gemini 3.8 Flash is cheaper: $0.82 / $4.13 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 5. On the 11 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Claude Opus 5 wins 9 and Gemini 3.8 Flash wins 2 (Claude Opus 5: Terminal-Bench 4.0, SWE-bench, Vibe Code Bench).

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

Gemini 3.8 Flash is cheaper: $0.82 / $4.13 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 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”.