# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gemini-3-5-flash-lite
- Last updated: September 4, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 9
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 5 leads overall 70.76 to 60.5.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 66 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 43.4 for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.0 in Agentic, with scores of 80.4% and 54%.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Google |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 70.76 | 60.5 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 23 | 10 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $0.30 / $2.50 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66 (Supported · #12/151)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite public-lane score: 43.4 (Estimated · #104/151)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | 54% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | 74% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 50.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.2 (Supported · #13/183)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite public-lane score: 43.6 (Supported · #121/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 54.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | 54.0% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 79.0% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 75.0% | Claude Sonnet 5 |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.3 (#13/48)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite public-lane score: 76.1 (#16/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 76.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite public-lane score: 60.8 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MRCRv2 | Coming soon | 72.2% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 67.1 (Supported · #20/181)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite public-lane score: 53 (Supported · #71/181)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 83.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 85.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 66 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 43.4 for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 23 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite cover on BenchLM?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite currently has 10 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-gemini-3-5-flash-lite)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite-vs-gpt-6-astra)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite profile](/models/gemini-3-5-flash-lite)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)