Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite — Side-by-side pricing
Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google).
Side-by-side pricing
| Feature | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $3.00 | $0.300 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $15.00 | $2.50 |
| 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 | 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 Sonnet 4.6
$4.5000
Input: $1.5000 +Output: $3.0000
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
$0.6500
Input: $0.1500 +Output: $0.5000
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 86% cheaper for this workload — saving $3.8500 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
No, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $0.300/1M input and $2.50/1M output tokens, it costs $0.6500 versus $4.5000 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 — a 86% difference.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports a 1M token context window. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 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 Sonnet 4.6 supports context caching (90% off repeated tokens). It offers a 50% Batch API discount. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite supports context caching (90% off repeated tokens). It offers a 50% Batch API discount.
No, they use different tokenizers. Claude Sonnet 4.6 uses the Anthropic tokenizer, while Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic): $3 input / $15 output per 1M tokens. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google): $0.3 input / $2.5 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 Sonnet 4.6 costs $12.6000 per 1M total tokens and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite costs $2.0600. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 84% cheaper for this pattern. For your exact ratio, paste a real prompt into the calculator above.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has a 1M-token context window — approximately 750K words or ~3K pages of standard text. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 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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