# Claude 3 Sonnet vs Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct

> Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (29.0 vs 29.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-3-sonnet-vs-phi-3-mini-128k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Sonnet scores higher in 6 categories and Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct in 2 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct leads 31.6 to 10.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 53.8% for Claude 3 Sonnet and 40.6% for Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct.
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 29.0 | 29.7 |
| Rank | 319 | 305 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 29.6 (#302)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 28.8 (#312)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 42.7% | 29.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1223 | 1039 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 53.8% | 40.6% |
| WeirdML | 10.2% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 64% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.3% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 20.5 (#237)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 19.6 (#256)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1197 | 1028 |
| DTBench | 53.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 120.7 | — |
| WinoGrande | 75.1% | — |

## Math

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 10.7 (#310)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 31.6 (#222)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1213 | 1089 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.5% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 18.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 21.1 (#276)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 26.8 (#254)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1173 | 984 |
| GPQA Diamond | 40.6% | — |
| MMLU | 75.9% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 25.2 (#125)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 984 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 37.8 (#234)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 25.2 (#285)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1205 | 1000 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1189 | 1016 |
| LMArena French | 1229 | 1039 |
| LMArena German | 1204 | 1006 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1131 | 899 |
| LMArena Korean | 1128 | 856 |
| LMArena Russian | 1227 | 1004 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1204 | 1059 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 62.8 (#235)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 51.8 (#294)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1199 | 1023 |

## Long Context

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 36.7 (#228)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 30.4 (#289)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1211 | 996 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 42.1 (#238)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 27.1 (#301)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1218 | 1050 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1186 | 1024 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1227 | 989 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 3 Sonnet better than Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct?

Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (29.0 vs 29.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Claude 3 Sonnet or Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (29.6 vs 28.8); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Sonnet has 30 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct has 19.