Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Gemma 3 12B

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 80× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 23 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.0

Rank #76 Confirmed

Gemma 3 12B Google

31.8

Rank #255 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 9 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 48.4 to 26.5.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 77.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B.
  • Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
ProviderAnthropicGoogle
Noometry Index44.031.8
Released2025-09-292025-03-12
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output64K8K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$15$0.15
Results tracked7324

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.8 (#54), Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
SciCode44.7%17.4%
LMArena Coding14891281
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%—
LMArena WebDev1393—
SWE-bench Multilingual67%—
GSO14.7%—
WeirdML47.7%—
ALE-Bench796.15—
AlgoTune1.52—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.1 (#30), Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard73.2%30.4%
Terminal-Bench46.5%—
GDPval42.5%—
Remote Labor Index2.1%—
τ²-bench Airline72%—
τ²-bench Banking25.3%—
τ²-bench Retail72.4%—
τ²-bench Telecom84.9%—
Cybench60%—
DeepResearch Bench52.6%—
OSWorld62.9%—
LMArena Search1159—
METR Time Horizons67.4%—
Vending-Bench 23,839—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#113), Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
CritPt1.1%0%
Chess Puzzles12%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts14621309
DTBench83.2%48.8%
LMCA38.8%4.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index146.84123.49
ARC-AGI-213.6%—
SimpleBench54.3%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%—
NYT Connections (extended)37.3%—
ARC-AGI-163.7%—
EnigmaEval6%—
EBR-Bench2.4%—
Mystery Game Puzzles17%—
ForecastBench61.9—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 31.9 (#190), Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%16.7%
LMArena Math14481307
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)23.9%—
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%—
ProofBench19%—
Omni-MATH55.3%—
MATH Level 597.7%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)15.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#70), Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
GPQA Diamond82.3%39.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%4.4%
LMArena Expert14831248
Humanity's Last Exam13.7%—
SimpleQA Verified30.7%—
MMLU-Pro86.9%—
GPQA (HELM)68.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.1 (#84), Gemma 3 12B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
VPCT39.8%—
LMArena Document1450—
MindCube—46.7%

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.6 (#65), Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Non-English14251318
LMArena German14271370
LMArena Russian14361335
LMArena Chinese1459—
LMArena French1459—
LMArena Japanese1390—
LMArena Korean1403—
LMArena Spanish1457—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.2 (#74), Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Instruction Following14591299
IFEval85%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#45), Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Longer Query14761317

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.7 (#33), Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Gemma 3 12B
LMArena Text14391334
LMArena Creative Writing14421331
EQ-Bench Creative Writing16781126
LMArena Multi-Turn14651334
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than Gemma 3 12B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 80× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 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 Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.8 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Gemma 3 12B share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.

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