Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Verdict
Pick Claude Haiku 4.5 for stronger coding and computer-use in a fast, cheap model; pick Gemini 2.5 Flash for the lowest price, a 1M context, and multimodal input.
Specs comparison
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | Gemini 2.5 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google DeepMind |
| Type | Closed source | Closed source |
| Context window | ✓200K | 1,048,576 tokens (1M) input; up to 65,535 output |
| Input / 1M tokens | $1.00 | ✓$0.30 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $5.00 | $2.50 |
| Release date | 2025-10 | 2025-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Gemini 2.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.3% | - |
| GPQA | 64.6% | - |
| MMLU Pro | 80.0% | - |
| Context window | - | 1M tokens |
| Input price | - | $0.30/1M |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts and independent benchmark aggregators.
Capability and benchmarks
Both are fast, low-cost workhorses. Claude Haiku 4.5 is the stronger coder: 73.3% SWE-bench Verified, 80.0% MMLU Pro, and 64.6% GPQA, with extended thinking and computer use (coding 78, reasoning 72). Gemini 2.5 Flash trades a little capability (coding 75, reasoning 76) for a configurable thinking budget and broader multimodal input. Haiku edges coding and computer-use; Gemini holds up on general reasoning.
Price and context
Gemini 2.5 Flash is the cheaper and longer-context option: $0.30 input / $2.50 output per 1M with a 1M-token context and text/image/video input (audio input $1.00/1M). Claude Haiku 4.5 is $1/$5 with a 200K context and text plus image input. Both are extremely fast (capability speed 98 for Haiku, 90 for Gemini) and support prompt caching.
Which to pick
- Pick Claude Haiku 4.5 for cheap sub-agents and parallel worker roles, coding and computer-use tasks, and fan-out under an Opus or Sonnet orchestrator.
- Pick Gemini 2.5 Flash for the absolute lowest cost, very long inputs beyond 200K tokens, and multimodal RAG or classification at scale.
Which should you choose?
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 if...
- →You need high throughput and low latency at minimal cost
- →You are fanning out many parallel sub-agents or worker calls
- →You want solid coding/computer-use quality without Opus/Sonnet pricing
- →Your task fits comfortably within a 200K context window
Choose Gemini 2.5 Flash if...
- →High-volume, latency-sensitive production workloads
- →Chatbots, extraction, classification, and summarization at scale
- →You need decent reasoning but must control costs