Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemini 2.5 Pro
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
| Specification |
by Anthropic
|
by Google
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current mid tier | Deprecated mid tier |
| Released | Jan 15, 2026 | Jun 17, 2025 |
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $3.00/Mtok | $1.25/Mtok |
| Output | $15.00/Mtok | $10.00/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $6.00/Mtok | $3.44/Mtok |
| Cached input | $0.300/Mtok | — |
| Specifications | ||
| Context window | 1M tokens | 2M tokens |
| Parameters | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Speed (TPS) | — | — |
| Modalities | ||
| Input |
textimage
|
textimageaudiovideo
|
| Benchmarks source: Vellum LLM Leaderboard | ||
| Avg benchmark score | 70.4 | 61.2 |
| Perf / dollar | 11.7 | 17.8 |
| GPQA Diamond | 89.9 | 86.4 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 59.1 | 32.6 |
| LiveCodeBench | 72.4 | 69 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 19.1 | 21.6 |
| ARC-AGI 2 | 58.3 | 25 |
| AIME 2025 | 83 | 88 |
| MMMLU | 89.3 | 89.2 |
| HumanEval | 79.6 | 59.6 |
| SWE-Bench Verified | — | 50 |
| MCP Atlas | 69.5 | — |
| BrowseComp | 76.2 | — |
| OSWorld-Verified | 78.5 | — |
| BFCL | — | 72 |
| MATH 500 | — | 80 |
| AutoBench | 5.3 | — |
| Independent composite scores each on its own scale — not part of the average above | ||
| AA Intelligence Index | 48.4 | 25.9 |
| AA Agentic Index | 42.1 | 7.2 |
| AA-Omniscience Index (−100–100) | 12.2 | -16.4 |
| LMSYS Chatbot Arena | 1472 ELO | 1445.4 ELO |
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
Anthropic — $3.00/$15.00/Mtok
|
Google — $1.25/$10.00/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 2.5 Pro | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $6 | $3.44 | $2.56 (42.7%) |
| 10M tokens | $60 | $34.38 | $25.63 (42.7%) |
| 100M tokens | $600 | $343.75 | $256.25 (42.7%) |
| 1000M tokens | $6000 | $3437.5 | $2562.5 (42.7%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above- your workload re-reads context (agents, RAG, long chats): cached input costs $0.300/Mtok — 90% off its list input price, a discount Gemini 2.5 Pro doesn't offer
- raw capability matters more than price: 70.4 vs 61.2 average benchmark score
- cost dominates: $3.44/Mtok blended vs $6.00 — 42.7% less on the same 50/50 token mix
- you need the longer context: 2M tokens vs 1M (2×)
The cheaper option here — Gemini 2.5 Pro costs $3.44/Mtok blended on Google.
Summary
Claude Sonnet 4.6 by Anthropic costs $3.00/Mtok input and $15.00/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image input.
Gemini 2.5 Pro by Google costs $1.25/Mtok input and $10.00/Mtok output, with a 2M-token context window. It supports text, image, audio, video input.
On a blended cost basis, Gemini 2.5 Pro is 42.7% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.6.It also has a larger context window.
On benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher (70.4 vs 61.2) on average. In terms of value, Gemini 2.5 Pro has better performance per dollar (17.8 vs 11.7).
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.