Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemma 3 12B
Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 133× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.
GoogleSummary
- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 9 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.8 to 15.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.4% for Claude Opus 4.6 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 4.6.
- Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Noometry Index | 58.2 | 32.1 |
| Released | 2026-02-04 | 2025-03-12 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 131K |
| Max output | 128K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 68 | 24 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1536 | 1281 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 78.7% | — |
| FrontierCode | 26.6% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 75.6% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1547 | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 72% | — |
| SciCode | — | 17.4% |
| GSO | 41.2% | — |
| WeirdML | 78% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 996.5 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.47 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 79.8% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 46.3% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 30.4% |
| Remote Labor Index | 4.2% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 27.3% | — |
| Cybench | 93% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 55.3% | — |
| GBAEval | 44.1% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1253 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 78.9% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 8,018 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 17% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1527 | 1309 |
| DTBench | 91.2% | 48.8% |
| LMCA | 55.8% | 4.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 155.24 | 123.5 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 69.2% | — |
| SimpleBench | 67.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.6% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 92.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 94% | — |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| EnigmaEval | 7.6% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 80.6% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 12.7% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 25% | — |
| ForecastBench | 60 | — |
Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.4% | 16.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1519 | 1307 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 66% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 26.8% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 78.5% | — |
| ProofBench | 50% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 40.7% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 22.9% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 39.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.2% | 4.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1546 | 1248 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 34.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 47% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Gemma 3 12B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1316 | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 28.3% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1507 | — |
| MindCube | — | 46.7% |
Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1489 | 1318 |
| LMArena German | 1502 | 1370 |
| LMArena Russian | 1497 | 1335 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1551 | — |
| LMArena French | 1513 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1484 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1464 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1510 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1523 | 1299 |
Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1520 | 1317 |
| CL-bench | 20.7% | — |
| CL-bench Life | 17% | — |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1503 | 1334 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1505 | 1331 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1809 | 1126 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1513 | 1334 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1223 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Gemma 3 12B?
Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 133× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 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 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Gemma 3 12B share?
20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.