💰 Unit Cost Winner Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite $0.075/1M in · $0.30/1M out
⚡ Latency & Speed Winner Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 78ms TTFT · 265 tok/s
💻 Coding (SWE) Winner Claude 4 Opus 77.2% SWE-bench · 96.8% HumanEval
🧠 STEM Reasoning Winner Claude 4 Opus 87.1% GPQA · 98.1% MATH-500

Which model is better: Claude 4 Opus or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 99.5% cheaper for input tokens ($0.07 vs. $15.00 per 1M tokens) and $0.30 vs. $75.00 for output tokens (200.0x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite delivers lower response latency at 78ms TTFT (842ms faster than Claude 4 Opus) with 265 vs. 46 tok/s throughput. Claude 4 Opus leads coding evaluations at 77.2% SWE-bench Verified vs. 55.4% for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and 87.1% vs. 68.4% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.

Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)

Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.

Metric / Dimension Claude 4 Opus Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $15.00 $0.07 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 200.0x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $75.00 $0.30 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (99.6% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $1.500 $0.015 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 100.0x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $18.75 $0.07 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 250.0x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output) 205k (64k out) 1,049k (33k out) Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (5.1x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency 920ms 78ms Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (842ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput) 46 tok/s 265 tok/s Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+219 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 77.2% 55.4% Claude 4 Opus (+21.8% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM) 87.1% 68.4% Claude 4 Opus (+18.7% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline) 91.8% 80.1% Claude 4 Opus (+11.7% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic) 98.1% 90.2% Claude 4 Opus (+7.9% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 43.6 / 100 81.5 / 100 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+37.9 pts)

Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster

Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.

25.0M Tokens
500K 50M 250M 500M+
5.0M Tokens
100K 25M 75M 150M+
50% Cached
0% (Uncached) 25% 50% (Typical Agent) 95% Max

Estimated Monthly Spend

Claude 4 Opus $581.25

$15.00/1M in · $75.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $1.500/1M read · $18.75/1M write

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite $2.63

$0.07/1M in · $0.30/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.015/1M read · $0.07/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$578.63 / mo
(99.5% lower cost with Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite)
Open Full Matchup Analysis →
A

When to Choose Claude 4 Opus

Choose Claude 4 Opus (Anthropic) for mission-critical R&D, long-horizon autonomous coding tasks, complex theorem proving, and executive strategic synthesis — offering a 204k context window, 920ms TTFT, and $15.00/1M input pricing ($1.500/1M cached reads).

B

When to Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite

Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google) for high-frequency data pipelines, real-time routing, large-scale document tagging, and ultra-low-cost conversational assistants — offering a 1,048k context window, 78ms TTFT, and $0.07/1M input pricing ($0.015/1M cached reads).

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: Claude 4 Opus or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper at $0.075/1M input tokens ($0.30/1M output) compared to $15.00/1M input ($75.00/1M output) for Claude 4 Opus.

Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 4 Opus or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite delivers faster first-token latency at 78ms TTFT (265 tok/s throughput) compared to 920ms TTFT (46 tok/s) for Claude 4 Opus.

How do Claude 4 Opus and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?

On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 4 Opus scores 77.2% versus 55.4% for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 4 Opus scores 87.1% versus 68.4% for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (and 98.1% vs 90.2% on MATH-500).

When should you choose Claude 4 Opus?

Choose Claude 4 Opus (Anthropic) for mission-critical R&D, long-horizon autonomous coding tasks, complex theorem proving, and executive strategic synthesis — offering a 204k context window, 920ms TTFT, and $15.00/1M input pricing ($1.500/1M cached reads).

When should you choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?

Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google) for high-frequency data pipelines, real-time routing, large-scale document tagging, and ultra-low-cost conversational assistants — offering a 1,048k context window, 78ms TTFT, and $0.07/1M input pricing ($0.015/1M cached reads).

Explore High-Priority Related Model Matchups