Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4 vs Llama 3.2 3B

Claude Sonnet 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.6 to 28.4 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 50× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4 Anthropic

40.6

Rank #139 Confirmed

Llama 3.2 3B Meta

28.4

Rank #318 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher in 9 categories and Llama 3.2 3B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4 leads 57.3 to 24.9.
  • Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.
  • Claude Sonnet 4 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 and Llama 3.2 3B specifications
Claude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
ProviderAnthropicMeta
Noometry Index40.628.4
Released2025-05-222024-09-24
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K131K
Max output64K118K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$15$0.33
Results tracked5818

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 44.0 (#70), Llama 3.2 3B: 27.1 (#314)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Coding14141098
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)64.9%—
Aider Polyglot61.3%—
SciCode40%—
GSO4.9%—
WeirdML46.1%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—23.4%
BigCodeBench Complete—28.3%
ALE-Bench655.35—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 38.3 (#29), Llama 3.2 3B: 19.9 (#135)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—21.9%
TheAgentCompany33.1%—
Cybench35%—
DeepResearch Bench46.6%—
OSWorld43.9%—
BALROG—10.1%
METR Time Horizons62%—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 23.0 (#169), Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#225)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Hard Prompts13721095
ARC-AGI-25.9%—
SimpleBench45.5%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark73%—
ARC-AGI-140%—
CritPt0.3%—
EnigmaEval3.1%—
DTBench77.1%—
LMCA29%—
Epoch Capabilities Index141.69—
ForecastBench60.2—

Math Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 41.5 (#71), Llama 3.2 3B: 29.9 (#213)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Math13751126
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202571.1%—
Omni-MATH60.2%—
MATH Level 584.4%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)4.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)0%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 41.6 (#99), Llama 3.2 3B: 29.1 (#232)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Expert13711090
GPQA Diamond79.2%—
Humanity's Last Exam7.8%—
MMLU-Pro84.3%—
Confabulations13.2%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.3%—
GPQA (HELM)70.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4: 25.6 (#116), Llama 3.2 3B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Vision1191—
GeoBench37%—
VPCT34%—
MindCube44.8%—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 46.9 (#151), Llama 3.2 3B: 26.4 (#276)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Non-English13331019
LMArena Chinese13511017
LMArena German13311056
LMArena Russian1355949
LMArena French1364—
LMArena Japanese1301—
LMArena Korean1293—
LMArena Spanish1356—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 71.8 (#141), Llama 3.2 3B: 56.3 (#270)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Instruction Following13751089
IFEval84%—

Long Context Too close to call

Claude Sonnet 4: 33.6 (#254), Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#256)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Longer Query13981101
Fiction.LiveBench46.9%—

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 57.3 (#127), Llama 3.2 3B: 24.9 (#302)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.2 3B
LMArena Text13511110
LMArena Creative Writing13451094
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1483595
LMArena Multi-Turn13761105
Short-Story Creative Writing81.4%—
WildBench83.8%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4 better than Llama 3.2 3B?

Claude Sonnet 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.6 to 28.4 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 50× 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 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 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4 or Llama 3.2 3B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.0 versus 27.1 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 Llama 3.2 3B share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4 has 58 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.2 3B has 18.

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