Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemma 3 4B

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 28.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 4B costs 200× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.2

Rank #20 Confirmed

Gemma 3 4B Google

28.1

Rank #326 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 9 categories and Gemma 3 4B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 61.9 to 11.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.4% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 7.5% for Gemma 3 4B.
  • Gemma 3 4B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.08 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 4B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6 and Gemma 3 4B specifications
Claude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
ProviderAnthropicGoogle
Noometry Index58.228.1
Released2026-02-042025-03-12
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K4K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.04
Output $ / M tokens$25$0.08
Results tracked6822

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Gemma 3 4B: 35.9 (#215)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
LMArena Coding15361230
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%—
LMArena WebDev1547—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—
GSO41.2%—
WeirdML78%—
ALE-Bench996.5—
AlgoTune1.47—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Gemma 3 4B: 20.9 (#142)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
Terminal-Bench79.8%—
APEX-Agents46.3%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—19.6%
Remote Labor Index4.2%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
Cybench93%—
DeepResearch Bench55.3%—
GBAEval44.1%—
LMArena Search1253—
METR Time Horizons78.9%—
Vending-Bench 28,018—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Gemma 3 4B: 13.2 (#335)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%25.2%
Chess Puzzles17%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts15271253
DTBench91.2%50.9%
LMCA55.8%2.8%
Epoch Capabilities Index155.24116.02
ARC-AGI-269.2%—
SimpleBench67.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
ARC-AGI-194%—
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
Mystery Game Puzzles25%—
ForecastBench60—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Gemma 3 4B: 16.8 (#292)

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Gemma 3 4B: 11.8 (#299)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
GPQA Diamond90.5%23.2%
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%6.4%
LMArena Expert15461223
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
SimpleQA Verified47%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Gemma 3 4B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
LMArena Vision1316—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1507—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Gemma 3 4B: 42.5 (#194)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
LMArena Non-English14891273
LMArena German15021281
LMArena Russian14971294
LMArena Chinese1551—
LMArena French1513—
LMArena Japanese1484—
LMArena Korean1464—
LMArena Spanish1510—

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Gemma 3 4B: 65.2 (#225)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
LMArena Instruction Following15231239

Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Gemma 3 4B: 38.7 (#194)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
LMArena Longer Query15201273
CL-bench20.7%—
CL-bench Life17%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Gemma 3 4B: 42.0 (#239)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Gemma 3 4B
LMArena Text15031291
LMArena Creative Writing15051271
EQ-Bench Creative Writing18091068
LMArena Multi-Turn15131255
EQ-Bench 41223—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Gemma 3 4B?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 28.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 4B costs 200× 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 4B?

Gemma 3 4B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemma 3 4B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 35.9 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 4B share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 4B has 22.

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