# Claude Sonnet 4 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash

> Gemini 3.6 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.1 to 40.6 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-4-vs-gemini-3-6-flash
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 30

## Summary

- They share 30 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher in 1 category and Gemini 3.6 Flash in 9 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Gemini 3.6 Flash leads 58.9 to 23.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-2: 5.9% for Claude Sonnet 4 and 60.4% for Gemini 3.6 Flash.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper at $0.75 / $3.75 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 200K.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 40.6 | 54.1 |
| Rank | 139 | 30 |
| Context | 200K | 1.05M |
| Input $/M | $3 | $0.75 |
| Output $/M | $15 | $3.75 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 4: 44.0 (#70)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 49.6 (#45)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 40% | 52.7% |
| WeirdML | 46.1% | 56.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1414 | 1492 |
| ALE-Bench | 655.35 | 715.52 |
| DeepSWE | — | 46.7% |
| FrontierCode | — | 34.4% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 64.9% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 61.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1536 |
| GSO | 4.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 4: 38.3 (#29)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 32.4 (#56)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | — | 46.9% |
| TheAgentCompany | 33.1% | — |
| Cybench | 35% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 46.6% | — |
| OSWorld | 43.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | — | 14% |
| METR Time Horizons | 62% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 4: 23.0 (#169)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 58.9 (#20)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 5.9% | 60.4% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 40% | 91.2% |
| CritPt | 0.3% | 10.6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1372 | 1486 |
| DTBench | 77.1% | 95.5% |
| LMCA | 29% | 44.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.69 | 154.36 |
| SimpleBench | 45.5% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 73% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 89% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 43% |
| EnigmaEval | 3.1% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 30% |
| ForecastBench | 60.2 | — |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 4: 41.5 (#71)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 57.0 (#33)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | 94.2% |
| LMArena Math | 1375 | 1504 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 58.9% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 22% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 70.8% |
| ProofBench | — | 36% |
| Omni-MATH | 60.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 84.4% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 4: 41.6 (#99)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 67.8 (#7)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 79.2% | 94.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1371 | 1489 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 7.8% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 66.2% |
| MMLU-Pro | 84.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 13.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 70.6% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 4: 25.6 (#116)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 38.7 (#55)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1191 | 1297 |
| GeoBench | 37% | — |
| VPCT | 34% | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | — | 31.2% |
| Furniture Assembly | — | 23.3% |
| LMArena Document | — | 1456 |
| MindCube | 44.8% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 4: 46.9 (#151)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 56.8 (#17)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1333 | 1470 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1351 | 1530 |
| LMArena French | 1364 | 1501 |
| LMArena German | 1331 | 1478 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1301 | 1477 |
| LMArena Korean | 1293 | 1435 |
| LMArena Russian | 1355 | 1490 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1356 | 1477 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 4: 71.8 (#141)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 77.2 (#27)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1375 | 1467 |
| IFEval | 84% | — |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 4: 33.6 (#254)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 45.1 (#47)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1398 | 1475 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 46.9% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 4: 57.3 (#127)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: 68.3 (#26)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1351 | 1478 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1345 | 1464 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1483 | 1604 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1376 | 1481 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 81.4% | — |
| WildBench | 83.8% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 4 better than Gemini 3.6 Flash?

Gemini 3.6 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.1 to 40.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?

Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4 lists at $3 and $15.

### Is Claude Sonnet 4 or Gemini 3.6 Flash better for coding?

Gemini 3.6 Flash scores higher on coding benchmarks: 49.6 versus 44.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.6 Flash does, with 1.05M tokens against 200K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3.6 Flash share?

30 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4 has 58 scored results on Noometry and Gemini 3.6 Flash has 46.