Side by side · November 2026

Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash

Claude Haiku 5.5 scores higher on the Models at Work leaderboard (73 vs 65 out of 100). On independent tests alone, Gemini 3.8 Flash is ahead (63 vs 55). Claude Haiku 5.5 is cheaper: 1,000 support replies cost about $0.50 at list price, against $3.75 on Gemini 3.8 Flash, which is 7.5 times as much. On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, one of the independent tests, Claude Haiku 5.5 leads 36 to 31.

Updated Nov 12, 2026 · every number links to who measured it

	Claude Haiku 5.5 · Anthropic	Gemini 3.8 Flash · Google
Leaderboard rank	#2	#12
Score (0–100)	73	65
Kind of work	High-volume work	High-volume work
Price per 1M tokens	$0.10 to read · $0.50 to write	$0.75 to read · $3.75 to write
Reads at once	1M tokens (about 750,000 words)	1M tokens (about 750,000 words)
Where you can get it	Claude Team and Enterprise, Amazon Bedrock, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (Google Cloud), Microsoft Foundry, GitHub Copilot	Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (Google Cloud), Gemini app (Google AI Pro and Ultra)
Can a company host it itself	No	No
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index	36	31
Arena Text score	Not measured	1497 (rank 8)
Scale SWE-Bench Pro V2 (mini-swe-agent)	Not measured	58.80%
Humanity's Last Exam, Diamond (Scale)	Not measured	34.30
Humanity's Sixth Sense (Scale)	Not measured	41.60
Best for	Sorting and routing tickets, Pulling fields out of invoices, First-pass support replies, Tagging and classifying records at volume	First-pass support replies, Summarising documents, images and recordings at volume, Routine multi-step tasks on a budget

Cost of 1,000 jobs

1,000 of these	Claude Haiku 5.5	Gemini 3.8 Flash
Support repliesthe customer message, the account notes and two help articles read; a 300-word reply written	$0.50	$3.75
Documents processeda two-page invoice or form read; the fields pulled out	$0.35	$2.63
Calls summariseda 40-minute call transcript read; a summary and next steps written	$1.30	$9.75
Contracts revieweda 40-page contract read against a checklist; a memo of issues written	$3.75	$28
Drafts writtena brief and one example read; a 600-word email or proposal section written	$0.55	$4.13

Worked out from each vendor’s list price and a fixed size for each job. A product built on a model charges its own price on top. See what every model costs for the same jobs.

Choose Claude Haiku 5.5 for

Sorting and routing tickets
Pulling fields out of invoices
First-pass support replies
Tagging and classifying records at volume

The pick for high-volume routine work: a twentieth of Claude Sonnet 5.5's list price, with users reporting near-perfect sorting in production, as long as each request stays short.

Caveats: The price is five times higher on any request that feeds it more than 100,000 tokens of text at once (a long document or a long back-and-forth). It scores 36 on Artificial Analysis's index against 55 for Sonnet 5.5: keep it off work that needs judgement. It ranks 2nd because price is 30% of the board's score and this is one of the two cheapest models here, not because of its test results.

Choose Gemini 3.8 Flash for

First-pass support replies
Summarising documents, images and recordings at volume
Routine multi-step tasks on a budget

Fast and well liked in blind votes for the money, at under half the list price of Gemini 4 Argon, but users report more made-up answers than rivals and Google doubles the price on 1 January 2027.

Caveats: $0.75 in / $3.75 out per million tokens (the unit vendors bill by) is introductory; Google's pricing page says $1.50 / $7.50 from 1 January 2027. Users report more invented facts and more dropped details between messages than with rival models: have someone check its output. Third Flash release in six weeks: expect Google to retire versions quickly and plan for re-testing. In the Gemini app it is for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, per Google's launch post. Google Workspace is not listed: no Google page we read names the model and a Workspace plan.

What people running them say

Claude Haiku 5.5: A Hacker News (developer forum) thread on it passed a thousand upvotes in a day. The recurring reports are that it sorts items into fixed categories almost without error in live use and is 'noticeably smarter than GPT-6 Luna'; the recurring complaint is the higher price on requests over 100,000 tokens (the unit vendors bill by).

Gemini 3.8 Flash: A very large Hacker News (developer forum) thread: 1,160 upvotes, 669 comments. simonw had it build an interactive chart as a web page in '13 seconds' for '1.8 cents'; colechristensen calls it 'competitive with opus/fable and also FAST'; several use it for the bulk of the work while a stronger model writes the plan. The pushback is about reliability: one user says it 'gives me the most hallucinations' (made-up facts) of the major models, others complain it ignores what was said one message earlier, and in some subjects its knowledge stops at early 2025, which hurts research tasks.

Questions people ask

Which is better, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

When should I choose Claude Haiku 5.5 over Gemini 3.8 Flash?

Choose Claude Haiku 5.5 for sorting and routing tickets, pulling fields out of invoices, first-pass support replies, tagging and classifying records at volume. The pick for high-volume routine work: a twentieth of Claude Sonnet 5.5's list price, with users reporting near-perfect sorting in production, as long as each request stays short.

When should I choose Gemini 3.8 Flash over Claude Haiku 5.5?

Choose Gemini 3.8 Flash for first-pass support replies, summarising documents, images and recordings at volume, routine multi-step tasks on a budget. Fast and well liked in blind votes for the money, at under half the list price of Gemini 4 Argon, but users report more made-up answers than rivals and Google doubles the price on 1 January 2027.

Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.10 per million tokens it reads (input) and $0.50 per million tokens it writes (output) on Anthropic's list price (Claude pricing, read Nov 12, 2026). A token is about three-quarters of a word. Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.75 per million tokens it reads (input) and $3.75 per million tokens it writes (output) on Google's list price (Gemini API Pricing, read Nov 12, 2026). A token is about three-quarters of a word.

What do 1,000 jobs cost on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash?

At list price: 1,000 support replies cost $0.50 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $3.75 on Gemini 3.8 Flash; 1,000 documents processed cost $0.35 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $2.63 on Gemini 3.8 Flash; 1,000 calls summarised cost $1.30 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $9.75 on Gemini 3.8 Flash; 1,000 contracts reviewed cost $3.75 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $28 on Gemini 3.8 Flash; 1,000 drafts written cost $0.55 on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $4.13 on Gemini 3.8 Flash. A product built on either model charges its own price on top.

Scores come from the Models at Work leaderboard: Score is 0 to 100 and computed, not typed. 40% is independent testing (Artificial Analysis, Arena, Scale, Epoch, Vals and others; each test is scaled against the best score on this board, and tests of real work, such as finished freelance projects or professional tasks, count double the exams). 30% is price: the vendor's list price for a typical mix of reading and writing, on a fixed scale from $0.05 to $60 per million tokens, so a model that costs a fifth as much gains real ground. 15% is what people report after running it, from Signals and linked threads. 15% is fit: how much text it can take in at once and where a business can get it (the products and clouds that carry it), with a small credit for open weights. A missing component drops out and the rest are reweighted. A model with no independent test yet is provisional and ranks below every measured one. Within three points is a tie. Vendor-published figures are labelled and never counted. Prices are vendor list prices where published; a typical mix assumes three parts reading to one part writing.