Claude Opus 5.5 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash

$1.34 / task
Wins 5 of 5 benchmarks
$0.93 / task
Wins 0 of 5 benchmarks
Humanity's Last Exam Humanity's Last Exam: Very hard expert questions across many fields, written to stump today’s models
Opus 5.554.7
Gemini 3.8 Flash42.1
Terminal-Bench 4.0 Terminal-Bench 4.0 · source setting 2: Agents use a terminal to complete executable coding, system administration and research tasks in the 4.0 suite
Opus 5.552.5
Gemini 3.8 Flash19.7
AutomationBench-AA AutomationBench-AA: Agents orchestrate SaaS workflows through APIs; objectives receive credit only when the task has no guardrail violation
Opus 5.561.2
Gemini 3.8 Flash60.9
Arena Text · creative writing Arena Text · creative writing: Human pairwise preferences in the stated text vote pool
Opus 5.5 · high1,519
Gemini 3.8 Flash · high1,487
MMMU-Pro (vision) MMMU-Pro (vision): College-level questions that require understanding images: charts, diagrams, photos
Opus 5.585.7
Gemini 3.8 Flash84.2

Specs

SpecOpus 5.5Gemini 3.8 Flash
Input, per 1M$4!$0.75
Output, per 1M$20!$3.75
Cost per task?$1.34$0.93
Speed, tok/s81—
Context1M1M
WeightsClosedClosed
ReleasedSep 2026Sep 2026
See images✓✓
Read PDFs✓✓
Hear audio—✓
Watch video—✓
Call tools✓✓
Force a tool call—Partial
Return strict JSON✓✓
Search the web✓✓
Run code✓✓
Use a computer✓?

What breaks when you switch

Opus 5.5 → Gemini 3.8 Flash
Sampling parameters are ignored›

temperature, top_p and top_k are ignored now and will cause HTTP 400 in future generations; remove them from requests.

No minimal thinking level›

The minimal thinking level returns an error; avoid minimal.

Gemini 3.8 Flash → Opus 5.5
No forced tool use›

Forced tool_choice any or tool returns HTTP 400; remove the forced choice.

Thinking is always on›

Disabled thinking or a manual budget returns HTTP 400; omit thinking or use adaptive thinking.

Remove sampling parameters›

Non-default temperature, top_p or top_k returns HTTP 400; omit these parameters and use prompting.

No assistant prefill›

Assistant prefill returns HTTP 400; use structured outputs or system instructions, with system instructions on Bedrock.

Old computer tool rejected · Claude API / Google Cloud›

The computer_20251124 tool returns HTTP 400 on the Claude API and Google Cloud; use computer_toolset_20260801 there.

Return thinking blocks unmodified›

Edited, reordered or partially dropped thinking blocks return HTTP 400; echo assistant messages complete and unmodified with tool results.