Which model is better: Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 97.5% cheaper for input tokens ($0.07 vs. $3.00 per 1M tokens) and $0.30 vs. $15.00 for output tokens (40.0x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite delivers lower response latency at 78ms TTFT (232ms faster than Claude 3.5 Sonnet) with 265 vs. 80 tok/s throughput. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite leads coding evaluations at 55.4% SWE-bench Verified vs. 49.0% for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and 68.4% vs. 59.4% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.
Zero-Shot RAG Verified
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 3.5 Sonnet
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens
$3.00
$0.07
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 40.0x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens
$15.00
$0.30
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (98.0% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M
$0.300
$0.015
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 20.0x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M
$3.75
$0.07
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 50.0x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output)
205k (8k out)
1,049k (33k out)
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (5.1x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency
310ms
78ms
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (232ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput)
80 tok/s
265 tok/s
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+185 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding)
49%
55.4%
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+6.4% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM)
59.4%
68.4%
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+9.0% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline)
78%
80.1%
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+2.1% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic)
78.3%
90.2%
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+11.9% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR)
46.2 / 100
81.5 / 100
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+35.3 pts)
Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster
Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.
Which is cheaper: Claude 3.5 Sonnet 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 $3.00/1M input ($15.00/1M output) for Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 3.5 Sonnet 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 310ms TTFT (80 tok/s) for Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
How do Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores 49% versus 55.4% for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores 59.4% versus 68.4% for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (and 78.3% vs 90.2% on MATH-500).
When should you choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet?
Choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) for legacy enterprise workflows, code review pipelines, and human-like content generation — offering a 204k context window, 310ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M 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).
