Model comparison

Claude Opus 4 vs Gemma 3 12B

Claude Opus 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 400× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4 Anthropic

42.9

Rank #93 Confirmed

Gemma 3 12B Google

31.8

Rank #255 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4 scores higher in 8 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4 leads 40.2 to 21.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 64.4% for Claude Opus 4 and 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B.
  • Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $75 for Claude Opus 4.
  • Claude Opus 4 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 and Gemma 3 12B specifications
Claude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
ProviderAnthropicGoogle
Noometry Index42.931.8
Released2025-05-222025-03-12
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K131K
Max output32K8K
Input $ / M tokens$15$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$75$0.15
Results tracked5624

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 47.8 (#55), Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Coding14421281
SWE-bench Verified70.7%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)67.6%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
SciCode—17.4%
GSO6.9%—
WeirdML43.7%—
AlgoTune1.33—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 34.5 (#39), Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—30.4%
Cybench38%—
DeepResearch Bench46.8%—
LMArena Search1127—
METR Time Horizons63.9%—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 27.4 (#104), Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
CritPt0.3%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts13991309
DTBench81.6%48.8%
LMCA37.4%4.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index142.67123.49
ARC-AGI-28.6%—
SimpleBench58.8%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark74.3%—
ARC-AGI-135.7%—
Chess Puzzles—0%
EnigmaEval5.6%—
ForecastBench61.1—

Math Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 40.2 (#80), Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202564.4%16.7%
LMArena Math13911307
Omni-MATH61.6%—
MATH Level 585%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)4.5%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 43.9 (#82), Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
GPQA Diamond76.3%39.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%4.4%
LMArena Expert13841248
Humanity's Last Exam10.7%—
MMLU-Pro87.5%—
Confabulations15.9%—
GPQA (HELM)70.8%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4: 30.9 (#101), Gemma 3 12B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Vision1192—
GeoBench49%—
VPCT38%—
MindCube—46.7%

Multilingual Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 49.0 (#133), Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Non-English13621318
LMArena German13911370
LMArena Russian13921335
LMArena Chinese1386—
LMArena French1370—
LMArena Japanese1332—
LMArena Korean1318—
LMArena Spanish1388—

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 77.3 (#26), Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Instruction Following14061299
IFEval91.8%—

Long Context Too close to call

Claude Opus 4: 39.5 (#167), Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Longer Query14221317
Fiction.LiveBench61.1%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 61.4 (#85), Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Text13771334
LMArena Creative Writing13861331
EQ-Bench Creative Writing15801126
LMArena Multi-Turn13961334
Short-Story Creative Writing83.6%—
WildBench85.2%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4 better than Gemma 3 12B?

Claude Opus 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 400× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4 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 lists at $15 and $75.

Is Claude Opus 4 or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.8 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4 does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4 and Gemma 3 12B share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4 has 56 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.

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