Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 vs Gemma 3 12B

Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 133× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.5 Anthropic

50.5

Rank #39 Confirmed

Gemma 3 12B Google

31.8

Rank #255 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher in 9 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Opus 4.5 leads 56.4 to 26.5.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 86.1% for Claude Opus 4.5 and 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B.
  • Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.5.
  • Claude Opus 4.5 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
  • Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.5 and Gemma 3 12B specifications
Claude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
ProviderAnthropicGoogle
Noometry Index50.531.8
Released2025-11-012025-03-12
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K131K
Max output64K8K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$25$0.15
Results tracked6924

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 55.4 (#21), Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Coding15041281
SWE-bench Verified76.7%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)76.8%—
LMArena WebDev1493—
SWE-bench Multilingual70.7%—
SciCode—17.4%
GSO26.5%—
WeirdML63.7%—
ALE-Bench1,025—
AlgoTune1.77—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 47.2 (#11), Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard77.5%30.4%
Terminal-Bench63.1%—
GDPval45.5%—
Remote Labor Index3.8%—
τ²-bench Airline84%—
τ²-bench Banking24.7%—
τ²-bench Retail79.6%—
τ²-bench Telecom92.3%—
Cybench82%—
DeepResearch Bench54.8%—
OSWorld66.3%—
BALROG43.5%—
LMArena Search1180—
METR Time Horizons75%—
Vending-Bench 24,967—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 42.5 (#43), Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
Chess Puzzles12%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts14761309
DTBench89.9%48.8%
LMCA44.5%4.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index150.1123.49
ARC-AGI-237.6%—
SimpleBench62%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark80.2%—
NYT Connections (extended)52.5%—
ARC-AGI-180%—
CritPt—0%
EnigmaEval11.9%—
EBR-Bench14.3%—
Mystery Game Puzzles22%—
ForecastBench60.7—

Math Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 38.5 (#85), Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202586.1%16.7%
LMArena Math14631307
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)34.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 44.9%—
ProofBench36%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)20.7%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 56.4 (#38), Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
GPQA Diamond86%39.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.9%4.4%
LMArena Expert14881248
Humanity's Last Exam25.2%—
SimpleQA Verified45.7%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.5: 31.1 (#99), Gemma 3 12B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
GeoBench75%—
VPCT40%—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1462—
MindCube—46.7%

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 54.5 (#45), Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Non-English14381318
LMArena German14491370
LMArena Russian14481335
LMArena Chinese1470—
LMArena French1471—
LMArena Japanese1415—
LMArena Korean1424—
LMArena Spanish1455—

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 77.7 (#20), Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Instruction Following14781299

Long Context Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 46.4 (#21), Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Longer Query14801317
CL-bench21.1%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 68.2 (#28), Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Text14511334
LMArena Creative Writing14451331
EQ-Bench Creative Writing16871126
LMArena Multi-Turn14661334

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.5 better than Gemma 3 12B?

Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 133× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 or Gemma 3 12B?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.5 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.5 or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.4 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.5 does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.5 and Gemma 3 12B share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.5 has 69 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.

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