Claude 4.1 Opus vs Gemini 2.5 Pro (May)
Head-to-head specifications
| Metric | Claude 4.1 Opus | Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence Index | 30.0 | 27.0 | +11.1% |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 1M tokens | — |
| Blended price ($/1M tokens) | $1.68 | $0.86 | +95.3% |
| Access | Proprietary API | Proprietary API | — |
- Claude 4.1 Opus leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 30.0 vs 27.0).
- Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) is the cheaper model to run at $0.86/1M blended tokens — about 2.0× cheaper.
- Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) offers the larger context window (1M tokens), useful for long documents and codebases.
Verdict: Claude 4.1 Opus or Gemini 2.5 Pro (May)?
Claude 4.1 Opus advantages
- General intelligence (+10%)
Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) advantages
- Context window (+74%)
- Affordability (+49%)
Which should you choose?
- Choose the Claude 4.1 Opus if you need the strongest overall reasoning and accuracy.
- Choose the Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) if you work with long documents or large codebases.
Value for money
Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) offers more intelligence per dollar (1.8× the Intelligence-Index-per-cost of the alternative), making it the stronger value for high-volume use.
Claude 4.1 Opus vs Gemini 2.5 Pro (May): which should you choose?
Claude 4.1 Opus — Anthropic multimodal model with an Intelligence Index of 30, a 262K-token context window and a blended price of $1.68/1M tokens.
Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) — Google multimodal model with an Intelligence Index of 27, a 1M-token context window and a blended price of $0.86/1M tokens.
Claude 4.1 Opus vs Gemini 2.5 Pro (May): Claude 4.1 Opus scores higher on the Intelligence Index. Claude 4.1 Opus leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 30.0 vs 27.0). Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) is the cheaper model to run at $0.86/1M blended tokens — about 2.0× cheaper.
Capability: intelligence, coding and agentic work
On the composite Intelligence Index the Claude 4.1 Opus scores 30.0 versus 27.0. Composite indices summarize many evaluations, but always test on your own workload before committing.
Context window and speed
The Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) accepts up to 1 million tokens per request, which sets how much documentation, transcript or code it can reason over at once.
Pricing and access
At blended per-token rates, Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) is the cheaper model to run ($0.86 vs $1.68 per 1M tokens). Claude 4.1 Opus is proprietary api and Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) is proprietary api. Open-weight models can be self-hosted, trading per-call cost for infrastructure you manage; for production also weigh rate limits, throughput and data-residency requirements.
The verdict
Both are credible choices in the ai model comparison space; the specification table above lays out every metric so you can weigh the trade-offs that matter to you. Pick the one whose strengths line up with how you will actually use it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Claude 4.1 Opus better than the Gemini 2.5 Pro (May)?
These two are closely matched — the right pick comes down to which specific strengths you value and the price you actually pay. Claude 4.1 Opus leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 30.0 vs 27.0).
What is the main difference between the Claude 4.1 Opus and the Gemini 2.5 Pro (May)?
Claude 4.1 Opus leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 30.0 vs 27.0). Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) is the cheaper model to run at $0.86/1M blended tokens — about 2.0× cheaper.
Which is better value?
Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) offers more intelligence per dollar (1.8× the Intelligence-Index-per-cost of the alternative), making it the stronger value for high-volume use.
Which should I choose?
Choose the Claude 4.1 Opus if you need the strongest overall reasoning and accuracy. Choose the Gemini 2.5 Pro (May) if you work with long documents or large codebases.
Methodology
Large language models are compared on independent leaderboard metrics: an Intelligence Index (a composite of reasoning and knowledge evaluations), Coding and Agentic indices where measured, community arena Elo, maximum context window, a blended API price per million tokens (weighted across cache-hit, input and output rates), and measured output speed in tokens per second. Where a model ships multiple reasoning-effort variants, we report its strongest variant. Benchmarks capture only part of real-world quality, which also depends on tool use, latency, safety and task fit — and this space moves quickly, so figures reflect the leaderboard snapshot on the page date.