Which is more cost-effective, Gemini 3.8 Flash or Claude Haiku 5.5?

Based on 1M input + 1M output tokens, Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $4.50/month versus Claude Haiku 5.5 at $0.60/month. The cheaper option depends on your token volume and prompt-to-completion ratio. Use the interactive calculator on this page to enter your exact usage.

How accurate is this cost comparison?

List prices come from each provider's own pricing page and every model page shows when they were last verified. The capability scores are iOPTERA's editorial composites — informed by public benchmarks, not benchmark results themselves; the methodology page explains how they are set.

Which model scores higher on benchmarks?

Gemini 3.8 Flash scores 90 in coding and 91 in reasoning benchmarks. Claude Haiku 5.5 scores 91 in coding and 91 in reasoning. See the full 5-category breakdown in the Benchmark Comparison section above.

What are the context window sizes of Gemini 3.8 Flash and Claude Haiku 5.5?

Gemini 3.8 Flash supports a 1.0M-token context window while Claude Haiku 5.5 supports 1.0M tokens. A larger context window lets you process more text in a single API call.

Which model is faster for real-time applications?

Gemini 3.8 Flash has a speed score of 95/100 and Claude Haiku 5.5 scores 96/100 on our latency benchmark. For interactive chatbots and low-latency tasks, the higher speed score is preferable.

Can I calculate costs for my specific token volume?

Yes. Use the interactive cost calculator on this page. Enter your monthly token volume and adjust the prompt-to-completion ratio. You can also use presets for common scenarios like Customer Support Bots (~30M tokens/month) or Document Summarizers (~15M tokens/month).

Cost and performance comparison

Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Claude Haiku 5.5

Model AGoogle

Gemini 3.8 Flash

Capability score (editorial)91/100

Cost / 1M Tokens: $1.65; 70% in · 30% out mix
Value Index (score÷cost): 56.9; Higher = better value

Speed: 95/100
Context: 1.0M
Tier: Fast Tier

List price from the Google pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.

Introductory price until December 31, 2026; $1.50 / $7.50 from the day after.

Check the source

How we verify prices

Model BAnthropic

Claude Haiku 5.5

Capability score (editorial)91/100

Cost / 1M Tokens: $0.22; 70% in · 30% out mix; ≈ $0.31 for the same text, tokenizer included
Value Index (score÷cost): 289.3; Higher = better value

Speed: 96/100
Context: 1.0M
Tier: Fast Tier

List price from the Anthropic pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.

Its tokenizer produces about 43% more tokens than OpenAI's for the same text, so the real cost runs higher than the list price suggests. This is an estimate: the tokenizer has not been measured yet.

Check the source

How we verify prices

In-depth analysis

Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Claude Haiku 5.5: Detailed Comparison

Gemini 3.8 Flash is Google's lightweight-tier language model with a 1.0M-token context window, excelling at vision/multimodal. Claude Haiku 5.5 from Anthropic is a lightweight-tier model supporting 1.0M tokens in context, with standout performance in data extraction.

Claude Haiku 5.5 is both the cheaper and the stronger model here — for the same text it costs 80% less than Gemini 3.8 Flash and still leads on combined coding and reasoning by 1 points. There is no tradeoff to weigh on this pair: unless you need something specific from Gemini 3.8 Flash, the cheaper model is simply the better one. Gemini 3.8 Flash is priced at $0.75/M input tokens and $3.75/M output tokens. Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.10/M input and $0.50/M output.

Claude Haiku 5.5 turns the same text into about 47% more tokens than Gemini 3.8 Flash, because their tokenizers differ — so comparing list prices per token understates what Claude Haiku 5.5 costs. For the same text, split 70% input and 30% output and counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts it, Claude Haiku 5.5 works out at about $0.31 per million tokens and Gemini 3.8 Flash at $1.60. Every cost figure on this page includes that difference.

On iOPTERA's editorial scores, Claude Haiku 5.5 leads with 91/100 for coding and 91/100 for reasoning, against Gemini 3.8 Flash's 90/100 and 91/100.

Capability breakdown

Across the five core benchmark categories, here is how Gemini 3.8 Flash and Claude Haiku 5.5 stack up head to head:

coding

Claude Haiku leads

reasoning

Tie

data extraction

Claude Haiku leads

creative tasks

Tie

vision/multimodal

Gemini 3.8 leads

Best model by task

coding: Claude Haiku 5.5 wins with 91/100
data extraction: Claude Haiku 5.5 wins with 93/100
vision/multimodal: Gemini 3.8 Flash wins with 94/100

Estimated monthly cost at scale

For 10M + 2M tokens of text a month (counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts), Gemini 3.8 Flash runs about $14.55 while Claude Haiku 5.5 runs about $2.86 — Claude Haiku 5.5 saves roughly $11.69 (80%) every month.

What actually decides it

Gemini 3.8 Flash and Claude Haiku 5.5 come from different labs, which means different tokenizers, different API shapes, and a second vendor relationship. The same English text does not produce the same token count on both, so a price-per-million comparison understates the difference — measure your own prompts on each before treating the headline rates as the full story.

Claude Haiku 5.5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash were released within 1 months of each other, so they are competing on the same evaluations under roughly the same conditions. That makes a direct benchmark comparison meaningful here in a way it usually is not — neither model has the advantage of being measured on a newer, easier set of tests.

Context is effectively a tie: 1.0M against 1.0M. Neither model unlocks a document size the other cannot handle, so this axis should not enter the decision. If you were hoping context would break the tie for you, it will not.

Throughput is close enough to ignore — 96/100 versus 95/100. Neither model will feel noticeably quicker in an interactive product, so latency is not a reason to choose between them.

Claude Haiku 5.5 wins this comparison outright — cheaper and stronger. Choose Gemini 3.8 Flash only if it has a specific capability you need; on price and benchmarks it is behind on both.

What you actually pay

The list price is only the start. Prompt caching, batch processing and long prompts change the bill, and each provider sets them differently. Prices per 1M tokens.

Pricing terms beyond the list price, per 1M tokens
Pricing term	Gemini 3.8 Flash	Claude Haiku 5.5
List price (input / output)	$0.75 / $3.75	$0.10 / $0.50
Cached input	$0.07510% of the input price	$0.0110% of the input price
Batch API	50% off input and output	50% off input and output
Long prompts	No surcharge across the 1.05M window	Over 100K tokens: $0.50 / $2.50
Input with 80% cache hits	$0.21	$0.028

With 80% of input served from the cache, Claude Haiku 5.5 costs 80% less than Gemini 3.8 Flash for the same input text, counting each model's tokenizer.The tokenizer factor for Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Haiku 5.5 is our estimate until it is measured.

The last row assumes 80% of input tokens are read from the cache, as in a chat app that re-sends a long system prompt or RAG over the same documents. Cache-write and storage charges are not included.

Claude also bills cache writes: 1.25× the input price for a 5-minute cache, 2× for one hour.

Gemini also bills cache storage by the hour.

Checked on October 8, 2026 against the pricing pages of Google, Anthropic.

Capability scores

iOPTERA editorial scores across 5 categories — informed by public benchmarks, not measured by us

CategoryGemini 3.8Claude HaikuWinner

Coding

Reasoning

Tied

Extraction

Creative

Tied

Vision

Gemini 3.8 Flash: 1 wins

Claude Haiku 5.5: 2 wins

Claude Haiku 5.5 leads overall

Speed Score

95/100vs96/100

GeminiClaude

Context Window

1049Kvs1000K

GeminiClaude

What Is a Token?

Models don't read words — they process tokens.

A token is roughly 4 characters of English text (~¾ of a word). Your API bill is priced per million tokens — understanding this directly reduces your costs.

Short phrase

"Hello, world!"

4 tokens

Gemini 3.8 Flash: $0.29
Claude Haiku 5.5: $0.06

Business email

One typical email (~200 words)

~270 tokens

Gemini 3.8 Flash: $19.64
Claude Haiku 5.5: $3.86

Code file

50-line Python script

~400 tokens

Gemini 3.8 Flash: $29.10
Claude Haiku 5.5: $5.72

Prices shown are for 100,000 runs of each workload — one run costs a fraction of a cent on both Gemini 3.8 Flash and Claude Haiku 5.5, so the number only becomes meaningful at production volume. Input tokens only; add your output volume in the calculator below.

How to check your token usage

response.usage.total_tokens

Every API response includes a usage object. Sum total_tokens across all calls to get your monthly figure, then use the calculator below.

Your Cost Calculator

Enter your actual monthly token usage to see real savings

Quick Presets

Monthly Token Volume

30M tokens

Prompt / Completion Split

Prompt 70%Completion 30%

Gemini 3.8 Flash

$48.02/mo

$576.18/yr

$0.75/M input$3.75/M output

Cheaper

Claude Haiku 5.5

$9.44/mo

$113.26/yr

$0.10/M input$0.50/M output

Annual Savings

$462.92 saved per year

Claude Haiku 5.5 cheaper · $38.58/mo

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