Model comparison

Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Gemma 3 12B

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.4 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet Anthropic

34.4

Rank #225 Confirmed

Gemma 3 12B Google

31.8

Rank #255 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores higher in 6 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 3 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in coding, where Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads 39.5 to 31.2.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is DTBench: 67.8% for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and 48.8% for Gemma 3 12B.
  • Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Gemma 3 12B specifications
Claude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
ProviderAnthropicGoogle
Noometry Index34.431.8
Released2024-06-202025-03-12
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window—131K
Max output—8K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.05
Output $ / M tokens—$0.15
Results tracked6024

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 39.5 (#145), Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
LMArena Coding13431281
Aider Polyglot51.6%—
SciCode—17.4%
GSO4.6%—
WeirdML40%—
BigCodeBench Instruct46.8%—
LiveBench Coding67.1%—
BigCodeBench Complete58.6%—
CadEval48%—
HumanEval+81.7%—
MBPP+74.3%—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 32.1 (#61), Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—30.4%
TheAgentCompany24%—
Cybench17.5%—
BALROG32.6%—
METR Time Horizons45.2%—

Reasoning Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 22.5 (#176), Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
LMArena Hard Prompts13051309
DTBench67.8%48.8%
Epoch Capabilities Index133.55123.49
SimpleBench41.4%—
CritPt—0%
Chess Puzzles—0%
EnigmaEval0.9%—
LiveBench Reasoning56.7%—
LiveBench Data Analysis55%—
LMCA—4.5%
ForecastBench60.7—
LiveBench59%—

Math Gemma 3 12B leads

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 18.0 (#282), Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-20258.5%16.7%
LMArena Math13061307
Omni-MATH27.6%—
LiveBench Math52.3%—
MATH Level 556.9%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)2.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)0%—

Knowledge Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 28.5 (#236), Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
GPQA Diamond55.3%39.5%
LMArena Expert12641248
Humanity's Last Exam4.1%—
MMLU-Pro77.7%—
Confabulations19.9%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—4.4%
GPQA (HELM)56.5%—
MMLU87.3%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 26.0 (#115), Gemma 3 12B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
LMArena Vision1125—
Video-MME60%—
GeoBench62%—
VPCT33%—
MindCube—46.7%

Multilingual Gemma 3 12B leads

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 43.4 (#180), Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
LMArena Non-English12831318
LMArena German12971370
LMArena Russian13051335
LMArena Chinese1271—
LMArena French1304—
LMArena Japanese1234—
LMArena Korean1200—
LMArena Spanish1289—

Instruction Following Too close to call

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 69.0 (#177), Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
LMArena Instruction Following12971299
LiveBench Instruction Following69.3%—
IFEval85.5%—

Long Context Too close to call

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 39.9 (#162), Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
LMArena Longer Query13111317

Writing & Preference Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 53.0 (#159), Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude 3.5 SonnetGemma 3 12B
LMArena Text12981334
LMArena Creative Writing12921331
EQ-Bench Creative Writing14511126
LMArena Multi-Turn13261334
Short-Story Creative Writing80.3%—
WildBench79.2%—
LiveBench Language53.8%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet better than Gemma 3 12B?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.4 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index.

Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.5 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Gemma 3 12B share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 60 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.

Related comparisons

Go deeper