Head-to-head comparison across 4benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Opus 4.8
93
Gemini 3.5 Flash
87
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.8 #3 · Gemini 3.5 Flash #8
Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 3.5 Flash only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Agentic
+2.9 difference
Coding
+21.9 difference
Knowledge
+12.1 difference
Multimodal
+7.7 difference
Claude Opus 4.8
Gemini 3.5 Flash
$5 / $25
$1.5 / $9
N/A
284.2 t/s
N/A
18.55s
1M
1M
Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 3.5 Flash only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Claude Opus 4.8 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 93 to 87. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Opus 4.8's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 76.4 against 54.5. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HLE, 57.9% to 40.2%. Gemini 3.5 Flash does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude Opus 4.8 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $5.00 input / $25.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $1.50 input / $9.00 output per 1M tokens for Gemini 3.5 Flash. That is roughly 2.8x on output cost alone.
Claude Opus 4.8 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 93 to 87. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HLE, where the scores are 57.9% and 40.2%.
Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.1 versus 58. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 76.4 versus 54.5. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.1 versus 77.2. Inside this category, GDPval-AA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Gemini 3.5 Flash has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.8 versus 76.1. Inside this category, CharXiv is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
For engineers, researchers, and the plain curious — a weekly brief on new models, ranking shifts, and pricing changes.
Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.