# Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite

> Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 40.4 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-gemini-3-1-flash-lite
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 35

## Summary

- They share 35 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 10 categories and Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite in 0 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 64.6 to 22.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 91.1% for Claude Opus 4.8 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 4.8.
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 1M.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 60.7 | 40.4 |
| Rank | 9 | 141 |
| Context | 1M | 1.05M |
| Input $/M | $5 | $0.25 |
| Output $/M | $25 | $1.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4.8: 60.2 (#9)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 37.5 (#179)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1556 | 1256 |
| SciCode | 53.5% | 41.9% |
| WeirdML | 82.9% | 52.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1491 | 1400 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,564 | 797.73 |
| DeepSWE | 59% | — |
| FrontierCode | 46.5% | — |
| GSO | 47.1% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#10)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 29.9 (#72)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| DeepResearch Bench | 50.2% | 37.3% |
| APEX-Agents | 48.9% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 8.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 39.7% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 33.8% | — |
| GBAEval | 70.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1204 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,787 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4.8: 64.6 (#14)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 22.3 (#181)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 88.8% | 67.2% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 91.1% | 8.2% |
| CritPt | 20.9% | 1.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | 34% | 25% |
| EnigmaEval | 23.5% | 3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1481 | 1407 |
| DTBench | 94.9% | 76.8% |
| LMCA | 57.5% | 35% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 158.3 | 144.45 |
| ForecastBench | 59.9 | 54.4 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | — |
| SimpleBench | 64.8% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 63.3% |
| EBR-Bench | 28.6% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 87.5% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4.8: 78.2 (#11)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 39.5 (#82)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 80% | 27.7% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.3% | 80% |
| LMArena Math | 1487 | 1427 |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 91.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 69% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 47.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 31.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#26)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 41.7 (#95)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 91% | 81.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1501 | 1397 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 8.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 8.2% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4.8: 43.2 (#20)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 38.7 (#57)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1295 | 1240 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 14.5% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 42.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1475 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4.8: 55.4 (#31)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 52.5 (#82)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1450 | 1410 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1509 | 1461 |
| LMArena French | 1482 | 1423 |
| LMArena German | 1470 | 1429 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1440 | 1411 |
| LMArena Korean | 1432 | 1393 |
| LMArena Russian | 1476 | 1420 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1470 | 1420 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4.8: 77.6 (#22)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 72.9 (#126)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1376 |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#37)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 42.5 (#117)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1482 | 1394 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4.8: 72.1 (#17)
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 61.0 (#90)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1460 | 1416 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1453 | 1401 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1476 | 1417 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1840 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1281 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite?

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 40.4 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 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 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.

### Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 60.2 versus 37.5 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 4.8 and Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite share?

35 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite has 38.