# Claude Opus 4.5 vs Gemma 3 12B

> Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 133× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-gemma-3-12b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 21

## Summary

- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher in 9 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Opus 4.5 leads 56.5 to 26.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 86.1% for Claude Opus 4.5 and 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.5.
- Claude Opus 4.5 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 50.5 | 32.1 |
| Rank | 47 | 262 |
| Context | 200K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $5 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $25 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4.5: 54.8 (#27)
- Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1281 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 76.7% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 76.8% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1494 | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 70.7% | — |
| SciCode | — | 17.4% |
| GSO | 26.5% | — |
| WeirdML | 63.7% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,025 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.77 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4.5: 47.3 (#12)
- Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 77.5% | 30.4% |
| Terminal-Bench | 63.1% | — |
| GDPval | 45.5% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 3.8% | — |
| τ²-bench Airline | 84% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 24.7% | — |
| τ²-bench Retail | 79.6% | — |
| τ²-bench Telecom | 92.3% | — |
| Cybench | 82% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.8% | — |
| OSWorld | 66.3% | — |
| BALROG | 43.5% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1180 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 75% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 4,967 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4.5: 42.6 (#51)
- Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 12% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1476 | 1309 |
| DTBench | 89.9% | 48.8% |
| LMCA | 44.5% | 4.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 150.09 | 123.5 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 37.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 62% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 80.2% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 52.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 80% | — |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| EnigmaEval | 11.9% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 14.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 22% | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.7 | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4.5: 38.6 (#132)
- Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 86.1% | 16.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1463 | 1307 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 34.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 4.9% | — |
| ProofBench | 36% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 20.7% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4.5: 56.5 (#44)
- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 86% | 39.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.9% | 4.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1487 | 1248 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 25.2% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 45.7% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4.5: 31.4 (#107)
- Gemma 3 12B: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| GeoBench | 75% | — |
| VPCT | 40% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 28.3% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1462 | — |
| MindCube | — | 46.7% |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4.5: 54.3 (#47)
- Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1438 | 1318 |
| LMArena German | 1449 | 1370 |
| LMArena Russian | 1447 | 1335 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1470 | — |
| LMArena French | 1471 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1416 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1424 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1458 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4.5: 77.5 (#19)
- Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1478 | 1299 |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4.5: 46.5 (#22)
- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1480 | 1317 |
| CL-bench | 21.1% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4.5: 68.1 (#28)
- Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1451 | 1334 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1445 | 1331 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1687 | 1126 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1466 | 1334 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4.5 better than Gemma 3 12B?

Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 133× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 or Gemma 3 12B?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.5 lists at $5 and $25.

### Is Claude Opus 4.5 or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 54.8 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.5 does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.5 and Gemma 3 12B share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.5 has 69 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.