Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Llama 3.2 3B

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.3 to 28.4 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 83× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.3

Rank #18 Confirmed

Llama 3.2 3B Meta

28.4

Rank #318 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 9 categories and Llama 3.2 3B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 73.7 to 24.9.
  • Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
  • Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Llama 3.2 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6 and Llama 3.2 3B specifications
Claude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
ProviderAnthropicMeta
Noometry Index58.328.4
Released2026-02-042024-09-24
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K118K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$25$0.33
Results tracked6818

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.7 (#15), Llama 3.2 3B: 27.1 (#314)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Coding15351098
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%—
LMArena WebDev1546—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—
GSO41.2%—
WeirdML78%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—23.4%
BigCodeBench Complete—28.3%
ALE-Bench996.5—
AlgoTune1.47—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.0 (#4), Llama 3.2 3B: 19.9 (#135)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
Terminal-Bench79.8%—
APEX-Agents46.3%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—21.9%
Remote Labor Index4.2%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
Cybench93%—
DeepResearch Bench55.3%—
BALROG—10.1%
GBAEval44.1%—
LMArena Search1253—
METR Time Horizons78.9%—
Vending-Bench 28,018—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.7 (#21), Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#225)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Hard Prompts15271095
ARC-AGI-269.2%—
SimpleBench67.6%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
ARC-AGI-194%—
Chess Puzzles17%—
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
Mystery Game Puzzles25%—
DTBench91.2%—
LMCA55.8%—
Epoch Capabilities Index155.36—
ForecastBench60—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 62.7 (#25), Llama 3.2 3B: 29.9 (#213)

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.8 (#23), Llama 3.2 3B: 29.1 (#232)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Expert15461090
GPQA Diamond90.5%—
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
SimpleQA Verified47%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.0 (#67), Llama 3.2 3B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Vision1316—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1507—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 58.2 (#4), Llama 3.2 3B: 26.4 (#276)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Non-English14901019
LMArena Chinese15511017
LMArena German15041056
LMArena Russian1497949
LMArena French1513—
LMArena Japanese1484—
LMArena Korean1465—
LMArena Spanish1512—

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.7 (#3), Llama 3.2 3B: 56.3 (#270)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Instruction Following15231089

Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#256)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Longer Query15201101
CL-bench20.7%—
CL-bench Life17%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.7 (#9), Llama 3.2 3B: 24.9 (#302)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Text15041110
LMArena Creative Writing15061094
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1809595
LMArena Multi-Turn15141105
EQ-Bench 41223—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Llama 3.2 3B?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.3 to 28.4 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 83× 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 Llama 3.2 3B?

Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.33 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Llama 3.2 3B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.7 versus 27.1 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 Llama 3.2 3B share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.2 3B has 18.

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