# Claude 3 Sonnet vs Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct

> Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (29.0 vs 29.3), 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-small-8k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Sonnet scores higher in 6 categories and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct in 2 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct leads 27.6 to 10.7.
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 29.0 | 29.3 |
| Rank | 319 | 314 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 29.6 (#302)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1223 | 1101 |
| WeirdML | 10.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 42.7% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 20.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 53.8% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 64% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.3% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 20.5 (#237)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1197 | 1100 |
| WinoGrande | 75.1% | 81.5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 15.9% |
| DTBench | 53.6% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 30.3% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 58.1% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 120.7 | — |
| HellaSwag | — | 77% |
| LiveBench | — | 24% |

## Math

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 10.7 (#310)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1213 | 1151 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.5% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 17.6% |
| MATH Level 5 | 18.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 21.1 (#276)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1173 | 1067 |
| MMLU | 75.9% | 75.7% |
| GPQA Diamond | 40.6% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 90.7% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 88% |
| TriviaQA | — | 58.1% |

## Multimodal

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 25.2 (#125)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 984 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 37.8 (#234)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1205 | 1058 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1189 | 1061 |
| LMArena French | 1229 | 1135 |
| LMArena German | 1204 | 1080 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1131 | 966 |
| LMArena Korean | 1128 | 894 |
| LMArena Russian | 1227 | 1111 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1204 | 1111 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 62.8 (#235)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1199 | 1087 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 47.2% |

## Long Context

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 36.7 (#228)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1211 | 1088 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 42.1 (#238)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1218 | 1110 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1186 | 1083 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1227 | 1068 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 12.9% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 3 Sonnet better than Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct?

Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (29.0 vs 29.3), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Claude 3 Sonnet or Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better for coding?

Claude 3 Sonnet scores higher on coding benchmarks: 29.6 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Sonnet has 30 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32.