Google: Gemini 4 Argon (batch) vs Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5.5
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-19.
| Google: Gemini 4 Argon (batch) | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | anthropic | |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 90.2 | 96.9 |
| Input Price | $1.00/M | $2.00/M |
| Output Price | $5.00/M | $10.00/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,000,000 |
| Max Output | 943,718 | 128,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | ✓ | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 86.7 | 92.4 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Gemini 4 Argon (batch) costs $2.25 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $4.50, so Gemini 4 Argon (batch) is about 2.0 times cheaper for the same work.
Both take in a similar amount of text: 1,048,576 and 1,000,000 tokens, about 1,573 and 1,500 pages.
Only Gemini 4 Argon (batch) offers audio input and video input.
On our blended benchmark score Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 96.9 to 90.2.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Gemini 4 Argon (batch) scores higher on 7 (Code Completion, Code Documentation, Regex Writing and others), Claude Sonnet 5.5 on 13 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Refactoring and others).
Gemini 4 Argon (batch) was released in October 2026 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 in September 2026.
Pick Gemini 4 Argon (batch) if you need lower cost, audio input or video input; pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 if you need benchmark performance.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Google: Gemini 4 Argon (batch) | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 143 | 143 |
| Code Review | 148 | 149 |
| Code Completion | 120 | 119 |
| Code Refactoring | 149 | 150 |
| Bug Fixing | 152 | 153 |
| Unit Test Generation | 134 | 135 |
| Code Documentation | 138 | 137 |
| Regex Writing | 127 | 126 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 130 | 131 |
| Frontend Component Design | 132 | 133 |
| Data Analysis | 137 | 137 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 136 | 136 |
| ETL Scripting | 140 | 140 |
| JSON Extraction | 122 | 121 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 120 | 118 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 135 | 135 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 135 | 135 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 151 | 151 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 119 | 118 |
| Blog Post Writing | 131 | 131 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →