Claude vs Gemini: Complete Comparison 2026

Claude Opus 4.6 and Gemini 3.1 Pro split benchmarks almost down the middle. Opus (released February 5) scores 1606 Elo on expert tasks. Gemini (released February 19) scores 94.3% on GPQA Diamond. Neither wins across the board.

Claude vs Gemini: the actual differences

Anthropic builds for tool-augmented reasoning. Give Claude a calculator, a search engine, and an API, and it outperforms Gemini on HLE: 53.1% vs 51.4%. It also generates up to 128K output tokens, double Gemini's 65K.

Google builds for raw scientific reasoning. Gemini 3.1 Pro gets 94.3% on GPQA Diamond where Claude gets 91.3%, and 77.1% on ARC-AGI-2 where Claude gets 68.8%. It's also the only model that processes video and audio natively.

Coding

Claude is the model behind Cursor, Windsurf, and Claude Code. Sonnet 4.6 matches about 98-99% of Opus on SWE-bench at a fifth of the cost ($3/$15 vs $15/$75). If you code with AI tools, you're probably already using Claude whether you know it or not.

Gemini Code Assist works well inside Google Cloud and Android Studio, but for general coding workflows, Claude has the ecosystem advantage.

Reasoning

On paper, Gemini wins reasoning. 77.1% on ARC-AGI-2, 94.3% on GPQA Diamond. But when you let models use external tools, Claude pulls ahead: 53.1% on HLE with tools vs Gemini's 51.4%. Opus 4.6 also has extended thinking mode and Agent Teams for multi-step work.

So: Gemini for pure brain power, Claude for real-world problem solving with tools.

Multimodal and context

Gemini handles text, images, audio, and video in one model. Claude does text and images but not audio or video natively.

Gemini offers 1M context by default. Claude has 200K standard, 1M in beta. But Claude's 128K output is double Gemini's 65K, which matters a lot for long code generation.

Pricing

Gemini 3.1 Pro costs $2/$12 per 1M tokens. Claude Opus 4.6 costs $15/$75. That's roughly 7x more expensive. Sonnet 4.6 at $3/$15 is closer to Gemini's price point and still excellent for coding.

Consumer plans are $20/mo (Claude Pro) vs $19.99/mo (Gemini Advanced). Basically the same.

Which one to pick

Coding: Claude. It runs the tools developers actually use.

Scientific reasoning: Gemini. Higher benchmark scores across the board.

Agent workflows: Claude. 1606 Elo on expert tasks, better tool use, Agent Teams.

Multimodal research: Gemini. Native video/audio, 1M context default.

Value: Gemini on API pricing. Sonnet 4.6 if you need Claude-quality coding cheaper.

Recent updates

• February 5: Anthropic released Opus 4.6 with extended thinking and Agent Teams.
• February 17: Sonnet 4.6 launched, matching 98-99% of Opus coding at 5x less cost.
• February 19: Google released Gemini 3.1 Pro with 2x reasoning boost.