Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemini 3 Flash

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a general-purpose language model from Anthropic, released in February 2026 as an update to the Sonnet 4 line that introduced adaptive thinking — a mode where the model automatically calibrates its reasoning depth based on task complexity rather than requiring manual configuration by the developer. The model accepts text and image inputs and integrates natively with web search and code execution tools, consolidating capabilities that previously required separate toolchain setup into a unified API surface. It became the primary workhorse model in the Claude 4 series for code assistance, agentic pipelines, and retrieval-augmented applications that benefit from built-in web access.

Gemini 3 Flash

Google DeepMind

Gemini 3 Flash, released by Google in December 2025, is a large language model from the Gemini 3 family that delivers reasoning and coding performance with efficiency optimized for high-volume workloads. It features a 1M token context window, 64K maximum output tokens, and native support for text, image, audio, video, and PDF input. Gemini 3 Flash targets cost-sensitive agentic workflows, document processing, and production APIs requiring fast, capable multimodal responses.