# Claude 3 Sonnet vs Claude Sonnet 4.6

> Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-3-sonnet-vs-claude-sonnet-4-6
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 23

## Summary

- They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Sonnet scores higher in 0 categories and Claude Sonnet 4.6 in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 52.9 to 10.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 2.5% for Claude 3 Sonnet and 85.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.6.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Noometry Index | 29.0 | 50.3 |
| Rank | 319 | 50 |
| Context | — | 1M |
| Input $/M | — | $3 |
| Output $/M | — | $15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 29.6 (#302)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 10.2% | 66.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1223 | 1504 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 75.2% |
| DeepSWE | — | 29.9% |
| FrontierCode | — | 24.3% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1522 |
| SciCode | — | 46.8% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 42.7% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 53.8% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 1,327 |
| HumanEval+ | 64% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.3% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude 3 Sonnet: —
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 53.4% |
| APEX-Agents | — | 43% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | — | 9.3% |
| DeepResearch Bench | — | 54.9% |
| OSWorld | — | 72.1% |
| ExploitBench | — | 23.6% |
| GBAEval | — | 48.8% |
| GDP.pdf | — | 18% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1221 |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 7,204 |

## Reasoning

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 20.5 (#237)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1197 | 1484 |
| DTBench | 53.6% | 89.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 120.7 | 152.24 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 60.4% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 80.9% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 86.5% |
| CritPt | — | 3.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 13% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 76.3% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 16% |
| LMCA | — | 46.5% |
| ForecastBench | — | 62 |
| WinoGrande | 75.1% | — |

## Math

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 10.7 (#310)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.5% | 85.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1213 | 1462 |
| ProofBench | — | 45% |
| MATH Level 5 | 18.2% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 32.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 8.3% |

## Knowledge

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 21.1 (#276)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 40.6% | 87.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1173 | 1500 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 35.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.6% |
| MMLU | 75.9% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 25.2 (#125)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 984 | 1283 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | — | 6.7% |
| LMArena Document | — | 1482 |

## Multilingual

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 37.8 (#234)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1205 | 1440 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1189 | 1491 |
| LMArena French | 1229 | 1465 |
| LMArena German | 1204 | 1428 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1131 | 1420 |
| LMArena Korean | 1128 | 1411 |
| LMArena Russian | 1227 | 1440 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1204 | 1464 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 62.8 (#235)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1199 | 1475 |

## Long Context

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 36.7 (#228)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1211 | 1479 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 42.1 (#238)
- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1218 | 1458 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1186 | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1227 | 1464 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1810 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | — | 1207 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 3 Sonnet better than Claude Sonnet 4.6?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Claude 3 Sonnet or Claude Sonnet 4.6 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 29.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 3 Sonnet and Claude Sonnet 4.6 share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Sonnet has 30 scored results on Noometry and Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57.