Gemini

Nano Banana 2.1 is exactly half price at 1K, 2K and 4K. Nano Banana 2 shuts down 29 October. The 512px tier does not survive.

Google AI Plus at $4.99 and ChatGPT Go at $8 exist for people who use an assistant a few times a week rather than daily. Most people paying $20 are overpaying by twelve dollars a month out of habit.

Gemini 3.6 Flash ($1.50/$7.50/M, AA Index 50, 304 tokens/sec, 1M context, Google Search grounding, multimodal) vs Claude Haiku 4.5 (~$0.80/$4/M, Anthropic fastest model, classification/routing specialist, US data residency, 200K context). Haiku is cheaper. Gemini is faster on raw throughput. Different primary strengths.

Google DeepMind (restructuring underway, Kavukcuoglu running ops, TPU access problem, London split ending, Gemini 3.6 Flash AA Index 50) vs Anthropic (Tino Cuéllar CGAO hired, FLI C+ highest safety rating, Claude Opus 5 AA Index 61, $965B pre-money valuation, IPO filed, Pentagon blacklist fight). Two very different lab structures and competitive trajectories in August 2026.

Currently on Android: Gemini has full OS-level access (voice, screen, apps). Claude and ChatGPT are restricted to their own app containers. The EU DMA order requires Google to grant Claude and ChatGPT the same OS-level access by July 2027. This comparison covers what each AI assistant can do on Android today vs what changes if the order holds.