# Claude 2.1 vs Claude 3 Sonnet

> Claude 3 Sonnet is the stronger model overall, scoring 29.0 to 25.2 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-2-1-vs-claude-3-sonnet
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 6

## Summary

- They share 6 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 2.1 scores higher in 1 category and Claude 3 Sonnet in 3 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude 3 Sonnet leads 21.1 to 15.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 33% for Claude 2.1 and 40.6% for Claude 3 Sonnet.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Noometry Index | 25.2 | 29.0 |
| Rank | 345 | 319 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude 2.1: 26.2 (#327)
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 29.6 (#302)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 7.1% | 10.2% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 42.7% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1223 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 53.8% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 64% |
| MBPP+ | — | 69.3% |

## Reasoning

- Claude 2.1: 21.4 (#221)
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 20.5 (#237)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51% | 53.6% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 119.27 | 120.7 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1197 |
| ForecastBench | 54.2 | — |
| WinoGrande | — | 75.1% |

## Math

- Claude 2.1: 10.2 (#315)
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 10.7 (#310)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.9% | 2.5% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1213 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 18.2% |

## Knowledge

- Claude 2.1: 15.4 (#292)
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 21.1 (#276)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 33% | 40.6% |
| MMLU | 73.5% | 75.9% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1173 |

## Multimodal

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 25.2 (#125)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 984 |

## Multilingual

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 37.8 (#234)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1205 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1189 |
| LMArena French | — | 1229 |
| LMArena German | — | 1204 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1131 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1128 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1227 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1204 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 62.8 (#235)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1199 |

## Long Context

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 36.7 (#228)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1211 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 2.1: —
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 42.1 (#238)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Claude 3 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1218 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1186 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1227 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 2.1 better than Claude 3 Sonnet?

Claude 3 Sonnet is the stronger model overall, scoring 29.0 to 25.2 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Claude 2.1 or Claude 3 Sonnet better for coding?

Claude 3 Sonnet scores higher on coding benchmarks: 29.6 versus 26.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 2.1 and Claude 3 Sonnet share?

6 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 2.1 has 7 scored results on Noometry and Claude 3 Sonnet has 30.