Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash
Gemini 3.8 Flash costs less on both: $0.45 in and $2.25 out per million tokens, against $1.20 in and $3.00 out for Claude Sonnet 5.5. Both on one key at UplinkSwitch, each next to its developer's list price.
Prices · per million tokens, USD
| Tokens | Claude Sonnet 5.5claude-sonnet-5-5 | Gemini 3.8 Flashgemini-3.8-flash |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $1.20Anthropic lists $2.00 · 40% under | $0.45Google lists $0.75 · 40% under |
| Cached input | $0.075Anthropic lists $0.10 · 25% under | $0.045Google lists $0.075 · 40% under |
| Output | $3.00Anthropic lists $10.00 · 70% under | $2.25Google lists $3.75 · 40% under |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Max output | 128,000 tokens | 65,536 tokens |
| Input | text, image | text, image, audio, video |
| Released | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-02 |
| Anthropic lifecycle | active, retires no sooner than 2027-09-28 | — |
| Formats | Anthropic SDK, OpenAI SDK | OpenAI SDK, Gemini SDK |
| Developer | Anthropic |
List price: each developer's published rate, read October 2026. A model with no cached rate bills cached tokens at its input rate. Live from GET https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/catalog. Lifecycle from Anthropic's model deprecations, read 2026-10-19.
What the same work costs · USD, here and at list
| Work | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 chat requests | $3.90list $9.00 | $2.03list $3.38 |
| 100 long documents | $6.60list $12.00 | $2.70list $4.50 |
| A month of both, daily | $315.00list $630.00 | $141.75list $236.25 |
A chat request is 2,000 input and 500 output tokens; a long document is 50,000 in and 2,000 out; the month is 1,000 chats and 100 documents a day for 30 days, uncached. Over that month Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $173.25 less here.
Same key, same URL
One base URL and one key serve both models. The request below calls Claude Sonnet 5.5; put gemini-3.8-flash in the model field to call Gemini 3.8 Flash instead.
shell
curl https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "authorization: Bearer sk-uplink-live-..." \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'Model pages: Claude Sonnet 5.5, Gemini 3.8 Flash. Pricing by family: Claude, Gemini. More comparisons: Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs GPT-6.1 Sol, Kimi K3 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813, Gemini 3.8 Flash vs GPT-6.1 Sol.
Questions
- Which costs less, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?
- Gemini 3.8 Flash costs less on both: $0.45 in and $2.25 out per million tokens, against $1.20 in and $3.00 out for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- Can I switch between them by changing the model id?
- Yes. Both answer in the OpenAI SDK format at the same base URL with the same key. Change the model id from claude-sonnet-5-5 to gemini-3.8-flash and nothing else.
- Is there a subscription?
- No. Prepaid credit from $10, with no subscription or monthly fee. Each top-up locks your prices for 30 days.
- Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 better than Gemini 3.8 Flash?
- Better depends on the job; this page compares what the catalog can measure. Gemini 3.8 Flash costs less on both: $0.45 in and $2.25 out per million tokens, against $1.20 in and $3.00 out for Claude Sonnet 5.5. Claude Sonnet 5.5 takes 1,000,000 tokens of context against 1,048,576 for Gemini 3.8 Flash. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the newer release. Both run on the same key, so the fair test is your own prompt sent to each model id.