Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision vs Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision and Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo has the stronger average benchmark score; Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $16.99 per million input tokens and $82.33 per million output tokens, and averages 83.8 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $16.99 / 1M
- Output
- $82.33 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 83.8
- Open weights
- No
Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo
Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo is a frontier model from Google DeepMind. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $16.32 per million input tokens and $72.61 per million output tokens, and averages 83.9 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $16.32 / 1M
- Output
- $72.61 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 83.9
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $16.99 | $16.32 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $82.33 | $72.61 | B |
| Context window | 128,000 | 1,000,000 | B |
| Max output | 16,384 | 128,000 | B |
| Average score | 83.8 | 83.9 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1447.6 | 1464.0 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision wins 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo wins 7, and 1 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.8 | 82.9 | 1.9 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision |
| GPQA Diamond | 79.6 | 81.7 | 2.1 | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.7 | 71.4 | 2.3 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision |
| HumanEval | 87.0 | 88.1 | 1.1 | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 90.6 | 90.6 | 0.0 | Tie |
| AIME 2025 | 86.4 | 83.7 | 2.7 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision |
| LiveCodeBench | 76.5 | 78.6 | 2.1 | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo |
| IFEval | 89.9 | 90.7 | 0.8 | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo |
| TruthfulQA | 83.7 | 85.9 | 2.2 | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 89.4 | 91.2 | 1.8 | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo |
| MMMU | 79.7 | 78.4 | 1.3 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision |
| Arena Elo | 1447.6 | 1464.0 | 16.4 | Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision costs about $33.33 per million tokens and Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo costs about $30.39. Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo is roughly 9% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision wins 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo wins 7, and 1 are tied. On the index average, Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo leads Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision by 0.1 points (83.9 versus 83.8).
The price picture favours Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo. The context picture favours Gemini 2.5 Pro 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 2.5 Pro Turbo for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision if
- You prefer Anthropic's tooling or already use it.
Choose Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 128,000-token output limit.
FAQ
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision better than Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo?
On the index average, Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo leads Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision by 0.1 points (83.9 versus 83.8). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision wins 4 benchmarks, Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo wins 7.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision or Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo?
Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $30.39 per million tokens, versus $33.33 for Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision.
Which has the larger context window?
Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Vision is proprietary; Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Gemini 2.5 Pro Turbo for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.