# Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemini 4 Argon

Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemini 4 Argon charge the same per token: $2 per million tokens read and $10 per million written. The bill can still differ, because the same text can be a different number of tokens on each. Below are both price lists, 8 everyday jobs priced on each, and the count for one text.

- Page, with a calculator for your own job: https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-vs-gemini-4-argon
- Makers: Claude Sonnet 5.5 from Anthropic, Gemini 4 Argon from Google

## Price per million tokens, in US dollars

| | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| --- | --: | --: |
| Input | $2 | $2 |
| Cached input | $0.10 | $0.10 |
| Cache write | $2.50 | not listed |
| Output | $10 | $10 |
| Blend, 3 read for each 1 written | $4 | $4 |
| Batch input | $1 | not listed |
| Batch output | $5 | not listed |
| Context window, tokens | 1M | not listed |
| Capability score (Epoch Capabilities Index; GPT-5 is 150) | 164 | 165 |
| Longest answer, tokens | 128K | not listed |

Gemini 4 Argon: Until 30 November 2026. From 1 December 2026 it is $4 in, $20 out and $0.20 cached.

Price change, Claude Sonnet 5.5: Cached input went from $0.20 to $0.10 per million tokens. The price of a cache write did not change.

## 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 Sonnet 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 4 Argon: 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 Sonnet 5.5 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| --- | --- | --: | --: |
| A chat question | 300, 500, 100 | $16.80 | $16.80 |
| A hard question, with thinking | 300, 1,400, 100 | $43.80 | $43.80 |
| A long report, summarised | 60,000, 2,000, 20 | $84.00 | $84.00 |
| A 40-turn agent task | 2,800,000, 40,000, 10 | $364 | $364 |
| A support bot's reply | 4,000, 300, 2,000 | $432 | $432 |
| Sort a message into a category | 250, 5, 50,000 | $825 | $825 |
| Read an invoice into fields | 1,500, 250, 1,000 | $165 | $165 |
| Review a pull request | 25,000, 4,500, 50 | $143 | $143 |

## Questions

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Gemini 4 Argon?

Per token, neither: both charge $2 per million tokens read and $10 per million written. The same text can still be a different number of tokens on each, so the bills can differ.

### Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Gemini 4 Argon?

They cannot be told apart on the Epoch Capabilities Index, an independent score from Epoch AI that combines over 50 benchmarks: Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores 164 and Gemini 4 Argon 165, within the range of doubt around each (GPT-5 is 150). So choose on price and on 10 tasks of your own.

### What does an AI agent task cost on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemini 4 Argon?

One 40-turn task that reads 2,800,000 tokens in all, 90 percent of them from cache, and writes 40,000, costs $1.21 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $1.21 on Gemini 4 Argon. At 10 tasks a day that is $364 and $364 a month.

### Does the same text take the same number of tokens on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemini 4 Argon?

No. Our lesson "How AI writes", 1,700 words long, is about 2,100 to 3,600 tokens on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and about 2,200 on Gemini 4 Argon. 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 Sonnet 5.5 and Gemini 4 Argon for work that can wait?

On Claude Sonnet 5.5 only: with a batch, where you collect the answers later, it costs $1 per million tokens read and $5 written. Google's price page lists no batch price for Gemini 4 Argon.

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