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Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash

Compare Claude Sonnet 5 from Anthropic and Gemini 3.6 Flash from Google on key metrics including benchmarks, price, context length, and other model features. Access both models and hundreds of others through the AIHubMix API.

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5GoogleGemini 3.6 Flash
Anthropic logo
Claude Sonnet 5
Anthropic · text, image, pdf → text

Claude Sonnet 5 is the next generation of Anthropic's Sonnet model family. It is a drop-in upgrade for Claude Sonnet 4.6 with three behavior changes: adaptive thinking is on by default, manual extended thinking now returns a 400 error (it was deprecated on Claude Sonnet 4.6), and setting sampling parameters (temperature, top_p, top_k) to non-default values returns a 400 error

Input$2 /M
Output$10 /M
Google logo
Gemini 3.6 Flash
Google · text, image, video, audio, pdf → text

Gemini 3.6 Flash provides sustained frontier-level intelligence optimized for real-world tasks at a higher speed and lower cost. Designed for the agentic era, it excels at code generation, agentic execution, and spatial reasoning. This model is particularly effective for rapid agentic loops involving complex coding cycles and iterations.

Input$1.5 /M
Output$7.5 /M
Cache read$0.15 /M

Pricing & Specifications

Prices are per million tokens. Time to First Token and throughput are rolling averages measured on AIHubMix.

Claude Sonnet 5
Gemini 3.6 Flash
Input /M
$2
$1.5
Output /M
$10
$7.5
Cache read /M
-
$0.15
Context length
1,000,000
1,048,576
Max output
128,000
65,536
Time to First Token
1.0 s
1.7 s
Throughput
7839.1 tok/s
98.9 tok/s
Modalities
textimagepdf
textimagevideoaudiopdf
Supported Parameters
thinkingtoolsfunction callingstructured outputs
thinkingtoolsfunction callingstructured outputsweblong context
API Formats
chat_completions · gemini_api · claude_api
chat_completions · gemini_api · claude_api
Released
June 30, 2026
July 21, 2026

Promotional prices show the discounted rate; see each model page for promotion windows.

Activity Past 30 Days

Daily traffic served through AIHubMix — how demand for each model is trending.

claude-sonnet-5gemini-3.6-flash

Tokens / day

-

Requests / day

-

Performance Past 3 Days

Measured on real AIHubMix traffic, hourly buckets. Gaps mean no traffic in that hour.

claude-sonnet-5gemini-3.6-flash

Throughput (tok/s)

-

TTFT (s)

-

Uptime (%)

-

LMArena Benchmarks

LMArena ratings by capability (Bradley-Terry, commonly called Elo). Higher is better.

Text
claude-sonnet-5gemini-3.6-flash
1420146015001540
Overall
14621480
Coding
15181521
Math
14741504
Hard prompts
14901500
Instruction following
14651472
Multi-turn
14721487
Creative writing
14371469
Longer query
14821486
Chinese
14991537
English
14741483
Vision
claude-sonnet-5gemini-3.6-flash
1240128013201360
Overall
12671285
OCR
12861301
Diagram
13061307
Homework
13101330
WebDev Arena
claude-sonnet-5gemini-3.6-flash
1480152015601600
Overall
15371538
React
15261542
HTML
15251546
Gaming
15481575
Simulations
15481552
Data analytics
14971521

Source: LMArena (arena.ai) leaderboard, imported by AIHubMix. Models without published ratings are omitted per chart.

Cost calculator

Estimate your monthly bill for the same workload on each model.

Gemini 3.6 Flash
$203 /mo
Claude Sonnet 5
$270 /mo

Monthly = daily × 30. Discounted rates applied where a promotion is active.

FAQ

Which is cheaper: Claude Sonnet 5, Gemini 3.6 Flash?

Gemini 3.6 Flash: $7.5/M output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5: $10/M. Use the cost calculator above to estimate your own workload.

How do their coding arena scores compare?

Claude Sonnet 5: 1521; Gemini 3.6 Flash: 1518 (LMArena coding leaderboard).

Which responds faster?

Claude Sonnet 5: 1.0s time to first token measured on AIHubMix; see the live performance charts above for how each model behaves across the day.

How large is each context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 accepts 1,000,000 and Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts 1,048,576 input tokens. Maximum output per request is 128,000 tokens on Claude Sonnet 5 and 65,536 tokens on Gemini 3.6 Flash.

Which one generates tokens faster?

Claude Sonnet 5 at 7839.1 tok/s and Gemini 3.6 Flash at 98.9 tok/s, measured as output throughput on AIHubMix — a separate metric from time to first token.

What inputs and capabilities does each model support?

Claude Sonnet 5 accepts text, image and PDF input and supports thinking, tool calling, function calling and structured outputs; Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts text, image, video, audio and PDF input and supports thinking, tool calling, function calling, structured outputs, web search and long context.

Can I call Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 3.6 Flash with the same API key?

Yes. AIHubMix serves every model on this page behind one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so switching between them is a one-line change to the model field — no second account, key or SDK.

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