Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemini 2.5 Pro
Data reconciled August 15, 2026
Short answer
Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro each win on different axes — neither is simply cheaper or better across the board.
Gemini 2.5 Pro is 1.6× cheaper on input.
Gemini 2.5 Pro holds a 1× larger context window.
Claude Sonnet 5 returns a 2× longer answer per call.
Side by side
| Parameter | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemini 2.5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google (Gemini) |
| Input, $ per 1M tokens | $2.00 | $1.25 |
| Output, $ per 1M tokens | $10.00 | $10.00 |
| Cache read, $ per 1M | $0.20 | $0.13 |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Max output | 128,000 | 65,535 |
| Vision | yes | yes |
| Tools | yes | yes |
| Reasoning | yes | yes |
| Status | available | available |
What it costs on your own workload
A price gap per million tokens says little until your volumes are plugged in: on a long fixed system prompt the winner is the model with cheap cache reads, not the one with a cheap input rate. Run Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro against your own numbers.
Open the cost calculatorWhat is deliberately absent
We do not compare answer quality and we do not reprint third-party benchmarks. We have no quality measurements of our own, and external tables go stale faster than prices while being compiled, almost always, by someone with a stake in the result. What is here is only what we reconcile ourselves every day: prices, limits and supported capabilities.