# Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash

Claude Haiku 5.5 is the cheaper of the 2: for the same tokens, 3 read for each 1 written, Gemini 3.8 Flash costs 7.5 times as much. Below are both price lists, what 8 everyday jobs cost a month on each, and how many tokens the same text takes on each, which can change the answer.

- Page, with a calculator for your own job: https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-gemini-3-8-flash
- Makers: Claude Haiku 5.5 from Anthropic, Gemini 3.8 Flash from Google

## Price per million tokens, in US dollars

| | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| --- | --: | --: |
| Input | $0.10 | $0.75 |
| Cached input | $0.01 | $0.075 |
| Cache write | $0.125 | not listed |
| Output | $0.50 | $3.75 |
| Blend, 3 read for each 1 written | $0.20 | $1.50 |
| Batch input | $0.05 | not listed |
| Batch output | $0.25 | not listed |
| Long prompt input (above 100K on Claude Haiku 5.5) | $0.50 | $0.75 |
| Long prompt output | $2.50 | $3.75 |
| Context window, tokens | 1M | 1.05M |
| Capability score (Epoch Capabilities Index; GPT-5 is 150) | 159 | 157 |
| Longest answer, tokens | 128K | 66K |

Gemini 3.8 Flash: Until 31 December 2026. From 1 January 2027 it is $1.50 in, $7.50 out and $0.15 cached.

## The same text, counted by each maker

Our lesson "How AI writes" (https://tecyfy.com/learn/how-ai-works/how-ai-writes), about 1,700 words of English:

- Claude Haiku 5.5: about 2,100 to 3,600 tokens. Anthropic does not publish its tokenizer. It says Claude 4.7 and later produce about 30 percent more tokens for the same text than earlier models, and an independent test counted TypeScript at 1.73 times OpenAI's figure. The range runs from OpenAI's count to 1.75 times it.
- Gemini 3.8 Flash: about 2,200 tokens. Google does not publish the Gemini tokenizer. Its rule is that a token is about 4 characters, so the count is the characters divided by 4.

## What 8 everyday jobs cost a month on each

Each job at its usual runs a day, for 30 days, at the standard price.

| Job | Tokens in, out, runs a day | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| --- | --- | --: | --: |
| A chat question | 300, 500, 100 | 84 cents | $6.30 |
| A hard question, with thinking | 300, 1,400, 100 | $2.19 | $16.43 |
| A long report, summarised | 60,000, 2,000, 20 | $4.20 | $31.50 |
| A 40-turn agent task | 2,800,000, 40,000, 10 | $21.96 | $165 |
| A support bot's reply | 4,000, 300, 2,000 | $22.20 | $166 |
| Sort a message into a category | 250, 5, 50,000 | $41.25 | $309 |
| Read an invoice into fields | 1,500, 250, 1,000 | $8.25 | $61.88 |
| Review a pull request | 25,000, 4,500, 50 | $7.13 | $53.44 |

## Questions

### Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

Claude Haiku 5.5 is cheaper: $0.10 per million tokens read and $0.50 per million written, against $0.75 and $3.75 on Gemini 3.8 Flash. On a mix of 3 tokens read for each 1 written, Gemini 3.8 Flash costs 7.5 times as much.

### Which is better, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

They cannot be told apart on the Epoch Capabilities Index, an independent score from Epoch AI that combines over 50 benchmarks: Claude Haiku 5.5 scores 159 and Gemini 3.8 Flash 157, within the range of doubt around each (GPT-5 is 150). So choose on price and on 10 tasks of your own.

### What does a support bot cost a month on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash?

At 2,000 replies a day, each reading 4,000 tokens (50 percent of them from cache) and writing 300, it costs $22.20 a month on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $166 on Gemini 3.8 Flash: Gemini 3.8 Flash costs 7.5 times as much for this job.

### What does an AI agent task cost on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash?

One 40-turn task that reads 2,800,000 tokens in all, 90 percent of them from cache, and writes 40,000, costs 7.3 cents on Claude Haiku 5.5 and 55 cents on Gemini 3.8 Flash. At 10 tasks a day that is $21.96 and $165 a month.

### Which has the larger context window, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

Gemini 3.8 Flash, with 1.05M tokens against 1M on Claude Haiku 5.5. The window holds your instructions, the files you attach, the conversation so far and the answer, all at once.

### Does the same text take the same number of tokens on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash?

No. Our lesson "How AI writes", 1,700 words long, is about 2,100 to 3,600 tokens on Claude Haiku 5.5 and about 2,200 on Gemini 3.8 Flash. Each maker cuts text its own way, and every extra token is paid for at the model's price.

### Can I pay less on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash for work that can wait?

On Claude Haiku 5.5 only: with a batch, where you collect the answers later, it costs $0.05 per million tokens read and $0.25 written. Google's price page lists no batch price for Gemini 3.8 Flash.

## Sources

- [Anthropic: API prices](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing)
- [Google: API prices](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing)
- [Epoch Capabilities Index, by Epoch AI (CC BY 4.0)](https://epoch.ai/benchmarks/eci)

## Other comparisons

- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Mythos 5.1](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-mythos-5-1.md)
- [Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Haiku 5.5](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-fable-5-vs-claude-haiku-5-5.md)
- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Mythos 5](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-mythos-5.md)
- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-opus-5.md)
- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Opus 4.8](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-opus-4-8.md)
- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Opus 4.7](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-opus-4-7.md)