Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
There is no quality verdict yet: the AIGROW small-business benchmark has not run Claude Haiku 5.5. On price, Claude Haiku 5.5 costs less: $0.10 in and $0.50 out per million tokens, against $0.30 in and $2.50 out for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite.
US dollars, standard rate, shortest context band. Price only: the benchmark has not run both.
- Claude Haiku 5.5
- $0.50
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
- $1.90
- Claude Haiku 5.5, per M tokens
- $0.10 / $0.50
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, per M tokens
- $0.30 / $2.50
3,000 tokens in and 400 out each, at list price.
Anthropic's new small model against Google's newest Flash-Lite, with Haiku a third of the price or less. 1,000 support replies cost $1.90 on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and $0.50 on Claude Haiku 5.5, so Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite costs 3.8 times as much.
What each one costs
The API price per million tokens and the cheapest app plan with each model, from the makers’ own pages. Each name opens that model’s full price page.
- Claude Haiku 5.5
- On the Anthropic API, Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens. In Claude, it comes with the free plan, and the cheapest paid plan with it is Pro at $20/mo. Plan prices read 20 October 2026.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
- On the Google API, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens.
Side by side
Each maker’s published rate for its standard tier. Cached input is what a repeated prompt prefix costs once the provider has stored it.
| Fact | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | |
| Tier | Small and fast | Small and fast |
| Input, per M tokens | $0.10 | $0.30 |
| Output, per M tokens | $0.50 | $2.50 |
| Cached input | $0.01 | $0.03 |
| Context window | 1M | 1.05M |
| Released | 7 Oct 2026 | 21 Jul 2026 |
| Weights | Closed weights | Closed weights |
What a job costs on each
1,000 runs of each job at the two list prices. The gap moves from job to job because the models price input, output and cached context differently.
| Job | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support reply3,000 in, 400 out. | $0.50 | $1.90 | Claude Haiku 5.5, 74% less |
| Document summary25,000 in, 1,000 out. | $3.00 | $10.00 | Claude Haiku 5.5, 70% less |
| Agent task80,000 in (70,000 cached), 3,000 out. | $3.20 | $12.60 | Claude Haiku 5.5, 75% less |
The token counts are ours, chosen to look like real work; the prices are the makers’. A model with no published cache price bills the agent task’s repeated context at its full input rate.
The small print
What each base rate leaves out, from the makers’ own pages: surcharges, discounts, promotions and cache pricing.
- Claude Haiku 5.5
- Prices are for prompts up to 100,000 tokens. A longer prompt bills $0.50 / $2.50, cache read $0.05, and its length counts cache reads and writes. Cache write $0.125 (5 min) or $0.20 (1 h) up to 100,000 tokens. Batch API 50% off. US-only inference bills 1.1x, the higher band included. Its tokenizer counts the same text as about 30% more tokens than Claude Haiku 4.5. Max output 128K. Anthropic’s pricing page
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
- Same price for text, image, video and audio input. Batch 50% off. Cache storage $1.00 per MTok per hour. Google’s pricing page
Other comparisons
Every head to head on the list that involves Claude Haiku 5.5 or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite.
Compare Claude Haiku 5.5 and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite with 44 other models
The price list sets every model’s input and output price side by side, with what a support reply, a document summary and an agent task cost on each.
Prices checked 15 October 2026