Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash — Side-by-side pricing
Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic) and Gemini 3.6 Flash (Google).
Side-by-side pricing
| Feature | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $5.00 | $1.50 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $25.00 | $7.50 |
| Context caching | Yes — 90% off cached tokens | Yes — 90% off cached tokens |
| Batch API discount | 50% off | 50% off |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Tokenizer | Anthropic tokenizer (Opus 4.7+) | Gemini tokenizer |
Real-world cost example
1,000 API requests per month, each with 500 input tokens and 200 output tokens (500K input + 200K output total).
Claude Opus 4.8
$7.5000
Input: $2.5000 +Output: $5.0000
Gemini 3.6 Flash
$2.2500
Input: $0.7500 +Output: $1.5000
Gemini 3.6 Flash is 70% cheaper for this workload — saving $5.2500 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
No, Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $1.50/1M input and $7.50/1M output tokens, it costs $2.2500 versus $7.5000 for Claude Opus 4.8 — a 70% difference.
Claude Opus 4.8 supports a 1M token context window. Gemini 3.6 Flash supports a 1M token context window. A larger context window lets you include more text — documents, conversation history, or code — in a single API call.
Claude Opus 4.8 supports context caching (90% off repeated tokens). It offers a 50% Batch API discount. Gemini 3.6 Flash supports context caching (90% off repeated tokens). It offers a 50% Batch API discount.
No, they use different tokenizers. Claude Opus 4.8 uses the Anthropic tokenizer (Opus 4.7+), while Gemini 3.6 Flash uses Gemini tokenizer. Different tokenizers split text differently, so the same prompt will produce different token counts on each model — the effective cost difference may be larger or smaller than the per-token price difference alone suggests.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic): $5 input / $25 output per 1M tokens. Gemini 3.6 Flash (Google): $1.5 input / $7.5 output per 1M tokens. Rates shown before caching or batch discounts.
For an 80% output / 20% input workload — typical for code generation or long-form writing — Claude Opus 4.8 costs $21.0000 per 1M total tokens and Gemini 3.6 Flash costs $6.3000. Gemini 3.6 Flash is 70% cheaper for this pattern. For your exact ratio, paste a real prompt into the calculator above.
Claude Opus 4.8 has a 1M-token context window — approximately 750K words or ~3K pages of standard text. Gemini 3.6 Flash has a 1M-token context window — approximately 750K words or ~3K pages. (Estimates assume ~0.75 words per token.)
Calculate costs for your actual prompt
Paste your prompt into the calculator and get exact token counts using each model's real tokenizer — all in your browser.
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