Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Gemini 2.5 Flash?

Gemini 2.5 Flash. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Gemini 2.5 Flash costs $0.00510 per task against $0.06000 for Claude Opus 4.8, which makes it 11.8x cheaper (a 92% saving).

How much do Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemini 2.5 Flash charge per million tokens?

Claude Opus 4.8: $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Gemini 2.5 Flash: $0.3 input and $2.5 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.

What does a million tasks cost on Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash?

At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $60,000 on Claude Opus 4.8 and $5,100 on Gemini 2.5 Flash. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.

Model price comparisons · August 2026

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash: API pricing compared

Same task, same tokens, two invoices. Every figure on this page is computed from our open pricing dataset, not copied from a blog post.

Gemini 2.5 Flash is 11.8x cheaper than Claude Opus 4.8 on a realistic task profile of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens per call, 3 calls per task: $0.00510 against $0.06000 per task, a 92% saving on identical work. Run a million tasks a month and that is the difference between $5,100 and $60,000.

Model	Input $/1M tok	Output $/1M tok	Output multiple	$/task	$/1M tasks
Claude Opus 4.8Anthropic · frontier	$5	$25	5x	$0.06000	$60,000
Gemini 2.5 FlashGoogle · fast	$0.3	$2.5	8.33x	$0.00510	$5,100

Monthly bill at three volumes

Tasks / month	Claude Opus 4.8	Gemini 2.5 Flash	Gap
10,000	$600	$51	$549
100,000	$6,000	$510	$5,490
1,000,000	$60,000	$5,100	$54,900

Where the money goes on each

Claude Opus 4.8 prices output at 5x its input rate, so on this profile output is 63% of its task cost. Gemini 2.5 Flash prices output at 8.33x input, putting output at 74% of cost. The model with the higher output multiple rewards capping response length more; the one with the higher input share rewards prompt caching and context trimming more. Cost tells you nothing about quality: run both on twenty of your real cases before deciding, and treat the cheaper model as the default until it demonstrably fails.

Break-even against a dedicated GPU

Against a $2/hour dedicated instance ($1,460/month fixed), self-hosting overtakes Claude Opus 4.8 at 24,333 tasks per month and overtakes Gemini 2.5 Flash at 286,275 tasks per month. The full method is in the self-hosting break-even guide.

Pricing the self-hosted side? Compare on-demand GPU rates:

Compare GPU cloud pricing →

Plug your own token counts into the $/task calculator, or read the full ten-model pricing comparison.

Compare against other models

Frequently asked

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Gemini 2.5 Flash?: Gemini 2.5 Flash. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Gemini 2.5 Flash costs $0.00510 per task against $0.06000 for Claude Opus 4.8, which makes it 11.8x cheaper (a 92% saving).
How much do Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemini 2.5 Flash charge per million tokens?: Claude Opus 4.8: $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. Gemini 2.5 Flash: $0.3 input and $2.5 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.
What does a million tasks cost on Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash?: At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $60,000 on Claude Opus 4.8 and $5,100 on Gemini 2.5 Flash. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.