# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 3.6 Flash across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gemini-3-6-flash
- Last updated: September 4, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 7
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 3.6 Flash 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 70.11.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 66 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 50.7 for Gemini 3.6 Flash.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is cursorBench32 in Coding, with scores of 61.5% and 53.5%.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash 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 3.6 Flash |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Google |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 70.76 | 70.11 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 23 | 8 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $1.50 / $7.50 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66 (Supported · #12/151)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 50.7 (Supported · #60/151)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | 83% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 73.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.2 (Supported · #13/183)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 58.9 (Supported · #30/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | 53.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 88.1% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 79.6% | Tie |
| deepSwe | Coming soon | 49% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.3 (#13/48)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 82.3 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | 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 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 77.8 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Gemini 3.6 Flash
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 67.1 (Supported · #20/181)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 68.6 (Supported · #18/181)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | 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% | 93.4% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 89.3% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Gemini 3.6 Flash?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 3.6 Flash?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 66 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 50.7 for Gemini 3.6 Flash.

### 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 3.6 Flash cover on BenchLM?

Gemini 3.6 Flash currently has 8 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 3.6 Flash vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-gemini-3-6-flash)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-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 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [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)