Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 41.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite costs 7.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 36 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.0

Rank #76 Confirmed

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite Google

41.8

Rank #113 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 36 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 6 categories and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 38.1 to 28.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 37.3% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 60.4% for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite.
  • Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
  • Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 1M.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
ProviderAnthropicGoogle
Noometry Index44.041.8
Released2025-09-292026-07-21
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M1.05M
Max output64K66K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$15$2.50
Results tracked7338

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.8 (#54), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.1 (#96)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
LMArena WebDev13931440
SciCode44.7%41.3%
WeirdML47.7%39%
LMArena Coding14891455
ALE-Bench796.15765.27
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%—
SWE-bench Multilingual67%—
GSO14.7%—
AlgoTune1.52—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.1 (#30), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 28.6 (#82)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
Terminal-Bench46.5%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard73.2%—
GDPval42.5%—
Remote Labor Index2.1%—
τ²-bench Airline72%—
τ²-bench Banking25.3%—
τ²-bench Retail72.4%—
τ²-bench Telecom84.9%—
Cybench60%—
DeepResearch Bench52.6%—
OSWorld62.9%—
GDP.pdf—10%
LMArena Search1159—
METR Time Horizons67.4%—
Vending-Bench 23,839—

Reasoning Too close to call

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#113), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#95)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
ARC-AGI-213.6%10.3%
NYT Connections (extended)37.3%60.4%
ARC-AGI-163.7%53.5%
CritPt1.1%0%
Chess Puzzles12%22%
LMArena Hard Prompts14621441
Mystery Game Puzzles17%19%
DTBench83.2%83.5%
LMCA38.8%37.6%
Epoch Capabilities Index146.84145.12
SimpleBench54.3%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%—
EnigmaEval6%—
EBR-Bench2.4%—
ForecastBench61.9—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 31.9 (#190), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#245)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)23.9%26%
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%0%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%71.1%
ProofBench19%13%
LMArena Math14481431
Omni-MATH55.3%—
MATH Level 597.7%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)15.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#70), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.0 (#66)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
GPQA Diamond82.3%83.3%
LMArena Expert14831430
Humanity's Last Exam13.7%—
SimpleQA Verified30.7%—
MMLU-Pro86.9%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%—
GPQA (HELM)68.6%—

Multimodal Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.1 (#84), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 40.3 (#38)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
LMArena Vision—1266
VPCT39.8%—
LMArena Document1450—

Multilingual Too close to call

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.6 (#65), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.8 (#59)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
LMArena Non-English14251428
LMArena Chinese14591467
LMArena French14591452
LMArena German14271454
LMArena Japanese13901428
LMArena Korean14031406
LMArena Russian14361443
LMArena Spanish14571440

Instruction Following Too close to call

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.2 (#74), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 75.0 (#77)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
LMArena Instruction Following14591420
IFEval85%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#45), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.8 (#80)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
LMArena Longer Query14761435

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.7 (#33), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.4 (#55)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
LMArena Text14391436
LMArena Creative Writing14421419
EQ-Bench Creative Writing16781559
LMArena Multi-Turn14651445
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 41.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite costs 7.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.8 versus 42.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite share?

36 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 38.

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