# Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3.6 Flash across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-gemini-3-6-flash
- Last updated: September 4, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 6
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Gemini 3.6 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 4.6 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Gemini 3.6 Flash leads overall 70.11 to 64.21.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 53.9 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 82.3 for Gemini 3.6 Flash.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) in Agentic, with scores of 57.3% and 73.8%.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Google |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 200K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 64.21 | 70.11 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 25 | 8 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $3.00 / $15.00 | $1.50 / $7.50 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Gemini 3.6 Flash
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 45 (Supported · #96/151)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 50.7 (Supported · #60/151)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 72.1% | 83% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| Claw-Eval | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 65.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 62.92% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 8.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| JobBench | 36.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 57.3% | 73.8% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |

### Coding

- Winner: Gemini 3.6 Flash
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 52.4 (Supported · #55/183)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 58.9 (Supported · #30/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 79.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-Rebench | 60.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| React Native Evals | 80.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | 51.48% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | 48.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 24.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.1% | 88.1% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 77.4% | 79.6% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| deepSwe | Coming soon | 49% | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | Coming soon | 53.5% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 53.9 (#33/48)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 82.3 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 77.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 65.8 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 77.8 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Gemini 3.6 Flash
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 56.7 (Supported · #51/181)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 68.6 (Supported · #18/181)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 89.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SuperGPQA | 95% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 49% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 85.6% | 93.4% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.3% | 89.3% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 47.9 (#84/120)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: Coming soon

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 49 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 32.400% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 8.300% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?

Gemini 3.6 Flash is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3.6 Flash?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 53.9 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 82.3 for Gemini 3.6 Flash.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 4.6 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 currently has 25 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Gemini 3.6 Flash cover on BenchLM?

Gemini 3.6 Flash currently has 8 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-gemini-3-6-flash)
- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Gemini 3.6 Flash vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gemini-3-6-flash-vs-gpt-6-astra)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Gemini 3.6 Flash profile](/models/gemini-3-6-flash)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)