Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Llama 3.2 3B

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 50× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 15 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.1

Rank #81 Confirmed

Llama 3.2 3B Meta

28.9

Rank #321 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 8 categories and Llama 3.2 3B in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 66.5 to 24.7.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 73.2% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 21.9% for Llama 3.2 3B.
  • Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.5 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
  • Llama 3.2 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Llama 3.2 3B specifications
Claude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
ProviderAnthropicMeta
Noometry Index44.128.9
Released2025-09-292024-09-24
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K131K
Max output64K118K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$15$0.33
Results tracked7318

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.3 (#61), Llama 3.2 3B: 27.6 (#319)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Coding14891098
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%—
LMArena WebDev1393—
SWE-bench Multilingual67%—
SciCode44.7%—
GSO14.7%—
WeirdML47.7%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—23.4%
BigCodeBench Complete—28.3%
ALE-Bench796.15—
AlgoTune1.52—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.3 (#32), Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#143)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard73.2%21.9%
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%—
BALROG—10.1%
LMArena Search1159—
METR Time Horizons67.4%—
Vending-Bench 23,839—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#125), Llama 3.2 3B: 21.0 (#228)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Hard Prompts14621095
ARC-AGI-213.6%—
SimpleBench54.3%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%—
NYT Connections (extended)37.3%—
ARC-AGI-163.7%—
CritPt1.1%—
Chess Puzzles12%—
EnigmaEval6%—
EBR-Bench2.4%—
Mystery Game Puzzles17%—
DTBench83.2%—
LMCA38.8%—
Epoch Capabilities Index146.84—
ForecastBench61.9—

Math Too close to call

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 32.3 (#216), Llama 3.2 3B: 32.4 (#214)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Math14491126
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)23.9%—
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%—
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 (#76), Llama 3.2 3B: 29.7 (#235)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Expert14821090
GPQA Diamond82.3%—
Humanity's Last Exam13.7%—
SimpleQA Verified30.7%—
MMLU-Pro86.9%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%—
GPQA (HELM)68.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.8 (#89), Llama 3.2 3B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
VPCT39.8%—
LMArena Document1450—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.4 (#69), Llama 3.2 3B: 26.2 (#281)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Non-English14251019
LMArena Chinese14591017
LMArena German14271056
LMArena Russian1437949
LMArena French1458—
LMArena Japanese1390—
LMArena Korean1403—
LMArena Spanish1457—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.0 (#78), Llama 3.2 3B: 56.0 (#275)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Instruction Following14591089
IFEval85%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#46), Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#261)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Longer Query14761100

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.5 (#34), Llama 3.2 3B: 24.7 (#307)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Text14391110
LMArena Creative Writing14421094
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1678595
LMArena Multi-Turn14651105
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than Llama 3.2 3B?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 50× 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 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 Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Llama 3.2 3B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.3 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Llama 3.2 3B share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.2 3B has 18.

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