Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4 vs Gemma 3 12B
Claude Sonnet 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.6 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's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 22 shared benchmarks.
GoogleSummary
- They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher in 8 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 4 leads 41.5 to 21.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 71.1% for Claude Sonnet 4 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.
- Claude Sonnet 4 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Noometry Index | 40.6 | 31.8 |
| Released | 2025-05-22 | 2025-03-12 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 200K | 131K |
| Max output | 64K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 58 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 44.0 (#70), Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 40% | 17.4% |
| LMArena Coding | 1414 | 1281 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 64.9% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 61.3% | — |
| GSO | 4.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 46.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 655.35 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 38.3 (#29), Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 30.4% |
| TheAgentCompany | 33.1% | — |
| Cybench | 35% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 46.6% | — |
| OSWorld | 43.9% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 62% | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 23.0 (#169), Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1372 | 1309 |
| DTBench | 77.1% | 48.8% |
| LMCA | 29% | 4.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.69 | 123.49 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 5.9% | — |
| SimpleBench | 45.5% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 73% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 40% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| EnigmaEval | 3.1% | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.2 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 41.5 (#71), Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | 16.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1375 | 1307 |
| Omni-MATH | 60.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 84.4% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 41.6 (#99), Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 79.2% | 39.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.3% | 4.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1371 | 1248 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 7.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 84.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 13.2% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 70.6% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4: 25.6 (#116), Gemma 3 12B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 44.8% | 46.7% |
| LMArena Vision | 1191 | — |
| GeoBench | 37% | — |
| VPCT | 34% | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 46.9 (#151), Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1333 | 1318 |
| LMArena German | 1331 | 1370 |
| LMArena Russian | 1355 | 1335 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1351 | — |
| LMArena French | 1364 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1301 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1293 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1356 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 71.8 (#141), Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1375 | 1299 |
| IFEval | 84% | — |
Long Context Gemma 3 12B leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 33.6 (#254), Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1398 | 1317 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 46.9% | — |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4 leads
Claude Sonnet 4: 57.3 (#127), Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1351 | 1334 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1345 | 1331 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1483 | 1126 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1376 | 1334 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 81.4% | — |
| WildBench | 83.8% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4 better than Gemma 3 12B?
Claude Sonnet 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.6 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's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 4 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4 or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.0 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4 does, with 200K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemma 3 12B share?
22 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4 has 58 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.