Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemma 4 26B A4B IT
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 4 26B A4B IT costs 94× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 27 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 27 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 9 categories and Gemma 4 26B A4B IT in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 64.7 to 21.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 82.9% for Claude Opus 4.8 and 35.2% for Gemma 4 26B A4B IT.
- Gemma 4 26B A4B IT is cheaper at $0.0675 / $0.23 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
- Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Gemma 4 26B A4B IT has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Noometry Index | 60.7 | 43.5 |
| Released | 2026-05-28 | 2026-04-02 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.0675 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $0.23 |
| Results tracked | 65 | 28 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 39.0 (#164)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1556 | 1359 |
| SciCode | 53.5% | 40% |
| WeirdML | 82.9% | 35.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1490 | 1447 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,564 | 927.17 |
| DeepSWE | 59% | — |
| FrontierCode | 46.5% | — |
| GSO | 47.1% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 48.9% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 8.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 39.7% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 50.2% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 33.8% | — |
| GBAEval | 70.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1204 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,787 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 21.8 (#213)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 20.9% | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 34% | 6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1482 | 1439 |
| DTBench | 94.9% | 74.9% |
| LMCA | 57.5% | 29.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 158.21 | 141.85 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | — |
| SimpleBench | 64.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 88.8% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 91.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 23.5% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 28.6% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 87.5% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.9 | — |
Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 47.6 (#67)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.3% | 82.2% |
| LMArena Math | 1487 | 1470 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 80% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 91.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 69% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 47.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 31.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#29), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 45.7 (#85)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 91% | 73.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1502 | 1447 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.2% |
Multimodal Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 40.6 (#46)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1294 | 1260 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 14.5% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 42.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1475 | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 53.1 (#71)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1450 | 1421 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1507 | 1495 |
| LMArena French | 1481 | 1460 |
| LMArena Russian | 1474 | 1434 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1466 | 1417 |
| LMArena German | 1472 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1432 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 74.8 (#82)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1420 |
Long Context Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 43.6 (#91)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1483 | 1428 |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16), Gemma 4 26B A4B IT: 58.6 (#115)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 26B A4B IT |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1461 | 1434 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1454 | 1402 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1840 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1476 | 1441 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1281 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Gemma 4 26B A4B IT?
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 4 26B A4B IT costs 94× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Gemma 4 26B A4B IT?
Gemma 4 26B A4B IT is cheaper. It lists at $0.0675 per million input tokens and $0.23 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Gemma 4 26B A4B IT better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 39.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemma 4 26B A4B IT share?
27 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 4 26B A4B IT has 28.