Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemma 3 27B
Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.5 to 30.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.
GoogleSummary
- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in 6 categories and Gemma 3 27B in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 88.7 to 24.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 100% for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 22.5% for Gemma 3 27B.
- Gemma 3 27B is cheaper at $0.08 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Noometry Index | 60.5 | 30.5 |
| Released | 2026-09-28 | 2025-03-11 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 131K |
| Max output | 128K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.08 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $10 | $0.16 |
| Results tracked | 16 | 43 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 65.5 (#6), Gemma 3 27B: 22.1 (#329)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 61% | 21.2% |
| FrontierCode | 52.1% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 4.9% |
| CursorBench | 55.5% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1699 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 61.9% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 39.9% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1322 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,819 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 44.9 (#14), Gemma 3 27B: 24.9 (#105)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 75.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 29.5% |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 52.4 (#29), Gemma 3 27B: 16.3 (#297)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 31.4% | 0% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 40.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 43.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1340 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 65% | — |
| DTBench | — | 52.5% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 51.5% |
| LMCA | — | 12.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 130.04 |
| LiveBench | — | 50% |
Math Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 88.7 (#4), Gemma 3 27B: 24.4 (#261)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | 22.5% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 88.8% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 80.5% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1312 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 74% |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#11), Gemma 3 27B: 25.4 (#256)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 95.6% | 47.7% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 46.5% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 40.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1303 |
Multimodal Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 53.2 (#5), Gemma 3 27B: 32.0 (#94)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1165 |
| GeoBench | — | 52% |
| Furniture Assembly | 75% | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5.5: —, Gemma 3 27B: 47.0 (#150)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1334 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena French | — | 1368 |
| LMArena German | — | 1362 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1308 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1349 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1348 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5.5: —, Gemma 3 27B: 70.8 (#155)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 74.9% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1321 |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5.5: —, Gemma 3 27B: 27.6 (#288)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 33.3% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1333 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5.5: —, Gemma 3 27B: 52.7 (#161)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1358 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1346 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 79.9% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1266 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 34.6% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 better than Gemma 3 27B?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.5 to 30.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Gemma 3 27B?
Gemma 3 27B is cheaper. It lists at $0.08 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5.5 lists at $2 and $10.
Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Gemma 3 27B better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 65.5 versus 22.1 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemma 3 27B share?
4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5.5 has 16 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 27B has 43.