# Claude 2.1 vs Gemma 2 9B

> Claude 2.1 and Gemma 2 9B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (25.2 vs 25.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-2-1-vs-gemma-2-9b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 2.1 scores higher in 3 categories and Gemma 2 9B in 1 category; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude 2.1 leads 15.4 to 9.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 33% for Claude 2.1 and 27.5% for Gemma 2 9B.
- Gemma 2 9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 25.2 | 25.9 |
| Rank | 345 | 341 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 2.1: 26.2 (#327)
- Gemma 2 9B: 29.4 (#304)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 7.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 34.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 22.5% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1173 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 40.6% |

## Reasoning

- Claude 2.1: 21.4 (#221)
- Gemma 2 9B: 15.9 (#309)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 119.27 | 119.83 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 15.2% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1171 |
| DTBench | 51% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 36.4% |
| ForecastBench | 54.2 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 28.7% |
| PIQA | — | 83.7% |

## Math

- Claude 2.1: 10.2 (#315)
- Gemma 2 9B: 9.9 (#318)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.9% | 0.6% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 19.8% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1183 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 21% |
| GSM8K | — | 84.9% |

## Knowledge

- Claude 2.1: 15.4 (#292)
- Gemma 2 9B: 9.7 (#305)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 33% | 27.5% |
| MMLU | 73.5% | 72.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1147 |
| BoolQ | — | 85.7% |

## Multilingual

- Claude 2.1: —
- Gemma 2 9B: 36.6 (#238)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1185 |
| LMArena French | — | 1190 |
| LMArena German | — | 1186 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1144 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1137 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1200 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1200 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 2.1: —
- Gemma 2 9B: 57.6 (#269)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 52.6% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1178 |

## Long Context

- Claude 2.1: —
- Gemma 2 9B: 36.3 (#233)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1197 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 2.1: —
- Gemma 2 9B: 32.1 (#281)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Gemma 2 9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1207 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1206 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 841 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1193 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 25.5% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 2.1 better than Gemma 2 9B?

Claude 2.1 and Gemma 2 9B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (25.2 vs 25.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Claude 2.1 or Gemma 2 9B better for coding?

Gemma 2 9B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 29.4 versus 26.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 2.1 and Gemma 2 9B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 2.1 has 7 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 2 9B has 35.