# Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite

> Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 40.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-6-vs-gemini-3-1-flash-lite
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 36

## Summary

- They share 36 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 9 categories and Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite in 1 category; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.8 to 22.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 92.1% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 8.2% for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite.
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite is cheaper at $0.25 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 1M.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 58.2 | 40.8 |
| Rank | 20 | 144 |
| Context | 1M | 1.05M |
| Input $/M | $5 | $0.25 |
| Output $/M | $25 | $1.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 37.8 (#188)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1547 | 1256 |
| WeirdML | 78% | 52.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1536 | 1400 |
| ALE-Bench | 996.5 | 797.73 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 78.7% | — |
| FrontierCode | 26.6% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 75.6% | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 72% | — |
| SciCode | — | 41.9% |
| GSO | 41.2% | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.47 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 30.2 (#79)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| DeepResearch Bench | 55.3% | 37.3% |
| Terminal-Bench | 79.8% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 46.3% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 4.2% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 27.3% | — |
| Cybench | 93% | — |
| GBAEval | 44.1% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1253 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 78.9% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 8,018 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 22.9 (#186)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.6% | 67.2% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 92.1% | 8.2% |
| Chess Puzzles | 17% | 25% |
| EnigmaEval | 7.6% | 3% |
| Thematic Generalization | 80.6% | 63.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1527 | 1407 |
| DTBench | 91.2% | 76.8% |
| LMCA | 55.8% | 35% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 155.24 | 144.47 |
| ForecastBench | 60 | 54.4 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 69.2% | — |
| SimpleBench | 67.6% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 94% | — |
| CritPt | — | 1.1% |
| EBR-Bench | 12.7% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 25% | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 40.7 (#90)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 66% | 27.7% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.4% | 80% |
| LMArena Math | 1519 | 1428 |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 26.8% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 78.5% | — |
| ProofBench | 50% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 40.7% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 22.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 41.9 (#104)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 81.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 34.4% | 8.6% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.2% | 8.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1546 | 1398 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 47% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 39.4 (#60)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1316 | 1240 |
| Furniture Assembly | 28.3% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1507 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 52.3 (#86)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1489 | 1411 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1551 | 1461 |
| LMArena French | 1513 | 1424 |
| LMArena German | 1502 | 1429 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1484 | 1413 |
| LMArena Korean | 1464 | 1392 |
| LMArena Russian | 1497 | 1420 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1510 | 1421 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 72.7 (#131)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1523 | 1377 |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 42.5 (#122)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1520 | 1394 |
| CL-bench | 20.7% | — |
| CL-bench Life | 17% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 60.9 (#94)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1503 | 1416 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1505 | 1401 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1513 | 1417 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1809 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1223 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 40.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

### Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 37.8 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite share?

36 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite has 38.