Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 33.0 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.1

Rank #81 Confirmed

Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct Microsoft

33.0

Rank #250 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 7 categories and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct 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 34.1.
  • Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct specifications
Claude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
ProviderAnthropicMicrosoft
Noometry Index44.133.0
Released2025-09-29—
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K—
Max output64K—
Input $ / M tokens$3—
Output $ / M tokens$15—
Results tracked7317

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.3 (#61), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 32.9 (#268)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
LMArena Coding14891130
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%—
LMArena WebDev1393—
SWE-bench Multilingual67%—
SciCode44.7%—
GSO14.7%—
WeirdML47.7%—
ALE-Bench796.15—
AlgoTune1.52—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.3 (#32), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
Terminal-Bench46.5%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard73.2%—
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 (#125), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 21.7 (#214)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
LMArena Hard Prompts14621127
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 Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 32.3 (#216), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 33.4 (#202)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
LMArena Math14491173
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), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.2 (#229)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
LMArena Expert14821108
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), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
VPCT39.8%—
LMArena Document1450—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.4 (#69), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.6 (#263)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
LMArena Non-English14251094
LMArena Chinese14591108
LMArena French14581110
LMArena German14271101
LMArena Japanese13901042
LMArena Korean1403954
LMArena Russian14371145
LMArena Spanish14571095

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.0 (#78), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 57.6 (#268)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following14591113
IFEval85%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#46), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 34.0 (#255)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
LMArena Longer Query14761120

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.5 (#34), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 34.1 (#272)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
LMArena Text14391138
LMArena Creative Writing14421107
LMArena Multi-Turn14651088
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1678—
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 33.0 on the Noometry Index.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.3 versus 32.9 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct has 17.

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