Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 3.5
2026 - Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Gemini 3.5 has a 1M context window - 5x larger than Claude Opus 4.8's 200K. Better for long documents and large codebases.
Specs comparison
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemini 3.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google DeepMind |
| Type | Closed source | Closed source |
| Context window | 200K | ✓1M |
| Input / 1M tokens | $15.00 | TBA |
| Output / 1M tokens | $75.00 | TBA |
| Release date | 2026-05 | 2026-05 |
Strengths
Claude Opus 4.8
- ✓Best-in-class multi-step reasoning
- ✓Improved instruction following over Opus 4.7
- ✓Reduced refusals on edge-case and nuanced requests
- ✓Superior long-context comprehension at 200K tokens
- ✓Strong scientific and mathematical analysis
Gemini 3.5
- ✓Action-first architecture for agentic and multi-step workflows
- ✓1M token context window - largest in class
- ✓Powers Google Antigravity CLI for terminal-native coding
- ✓Native Workspace integration with autonomous task execution
- ✓Companion Gemini Omni handles anything-to-anything multimodal generation
Which should you choose?
Choose Claude Opus 4.8 if you need...
- →Complex research and analysis tasks
- →High-stakes code generation
- →Long-document analysis
- →Nuanced reasoning requiring careful judgment
Choose Gemini 3.5 if you need...
- →Agentic workflows requiring multi-step tool use
- →Large codebase comprehension and editing
- →Google Workspace automation
- →Long document and multimodal analysis