Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic · Apr 2026
Anthropic's mid-tier workhorse: near-Opus capability at $3/$15, and the leader on the Finance Agent benchmark.
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Google · Jun 2025
The 2025 fast-tier favorite: hybrid reasoning, full multimodality and a 1M context at $0.30/$2.50.
The verdict
Claude Sonnet 4.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Gemini 2.5 Flash. On price the gap is dramatic: Gemini 2.5 Flash works out roughly 7.1x cheaper per blended million tokens. Gemini 2.5 Flash also takes 1.0M of context versus 1M for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
Benchmark head-to-head 1–0
Specs & pricing
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 2.5 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | — |
| Input price / 1M | $3 | $0.3 |
| Output price / 1M | $15 | $2.5 |
| Context window | 1M | 1.0M |
| Max output | 64K | 66K |
| Open weights | no | no |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text, image, audio, video |
| Knowledge cutoff | Jan 2026 | Jan 2025 |
| Released | Apr 2026 | Jun 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $52.50 | $6.75 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Gemini 2.5 Flash?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Gemini 2.5 Flash. On price the gap is dramatic: Gemini 2.5 Flash works out roughly 7.1x cheaper per blended million tokens. Gemini 2.5 Flash also takes 1.0M of context versus 1M for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Gemini 2.5 Flash?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3/$15 per million input/output tokens, while Gemini 2.5 Flash costs $0.3/$2.5. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $52.50 versus $6.75.
- Which model is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Gemini 2.5 Flash?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores ~79.6% versus ~48.9% for Gemini 2.5 Flash, making Claude Sonnet 4.6 the stronger pick for coding agents.
More comparisons
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.5Gemini 2.5 Flash vs GPT-5.5Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.2Gemini 2.5 Flash vs GPT-5.2Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.1Gemini 2.5 Flash vs GPT-5.1Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5Gemini 2.5 Flash vs GPT-5Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5 miniGemini 2.5 Flash vs GPT-5 miniClaude Sonnet 4.6 vs OpenAI o3Gemini 2.5 Flash vs OpenAI o3