Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo vs Gemini 3 Pro Turbo: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo and Gemini 3 Pro Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Gemini 3 Pro Turbo has the stronger average benchmark score; Gemini 3 Pro Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo
Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 2,000,000-token context window, costs $19.57 per million input tokens and $106.60 per million output tokens, and averages 85.7 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $19.57 / 1M
- Output
- $106.60 / 1M
- Context
- 2,000,000
- Avg score
- 85.7
- Open weights
- No
Gemini 3 Pro Turbo
Gemini 3 Pro Turbo is a frontier model from Google DeepMind. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $19.62 per million input tokens and $89.91 per million output tokens, and averages 86.4 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $19.62 / 1M
- Output
- $89.91 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 86.4
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $19.57 | $19.62 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $106.60 | $89.91 | B |
| Context window | 2,000,000 | 400,000 | A |
| Max output | 65,536 | 16,384 | A |
| Average score | 85.7 | 86.4 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1469.3 | 1494.9 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo wins 4, Gemini 3 Pro Turbo wins 8, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 85.8 | 85.6 | 0.2 | Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo |
| GPQA Diamond | 81.9 | 81.0 | 0.9 | Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.0 | 77.4 | 2.4 | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo |
| HumanEval | 89.8 | 90.3 | 0.5 | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 93.2 | 92.4 | 0.8 | Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo |
| AIME 2025 | 87.2 | 82.8 | 4.4 | Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 78.5 | 82.7 | 4.2 | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo |
| IFEval | 92.2 | 93.4 | 1.2 | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo |
| TruthfulQA | 85.5 | 87.8 | 2.3 | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 92.8 | 94.6 | 1.8 | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo |
| MMMU | 80.5 | 82.7 | 2.2 | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo |
| Arena Elo | 1469.3 | 1494.9 | 25.6 | Gemini 3 Pro Turbo |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo costs about $41.33 per million tokens and Gemini 3 Pro Turbo costs about $37.19. Gemini 3 Pro Turbo is roughly 10% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens, compared with 400,000 for Gemini 3 Pro Turbo. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo wins 4, Gemini 3 Pro Turbo wins 8, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Gemini 3 Pro Turbo leads Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo by 0.7 points (86.4 versus 85.7).
The price picture favours Gemini 3 Pro Turbo. The context picture favours Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Gemini 3 Pro Turbo for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo if
- You need the larger 2,000,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
Choose Gemini 3 Pro Turbo if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
FAQ
Is Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo better than Gemini 3 Pro Turbo?
On the index average, Gemini 3 Pro Turbo leads Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo by 0.7 points (86.4 versus 85.7). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo wins 4 benchmarks, Gemini 3 Pro Turbo wins 8.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo or Gemini 3 Pro Turbo?
Gemini 3 Pro Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $37.19 per million tokens, versus $41.33 for Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens. Gemini 3 Pro Turbo has 400,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Opus 4.5 Turbo is proprietary; Gemini 3 Pro Turbo is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Gemini 3 Pro Turbo for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.