# Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemma 3 27B

> Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 30.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 100× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-gemma-3-27b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 28

## Summary

- They share 28 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 10 categories and Gemma 3 27B in 0 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 78.4 to 25.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 98.3% for Claude Opus 4.8 and 22.5% for Gemma 3 27B.
- Gemma 3 27B is cheaper at $0.08 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
- Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 60.7 | 30.8 |
| Rank | 13 | 284 |
| Context | 1M | 131K |
| Input $/M | $5 | $0.08 |
| Output $/M | $25 | $0.16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12)
- Gemma 3 27B: 22.5 (#334)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 53.5% | 21.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1490 | 1322 |
| DeepSWE | 59% | — |
| FrontierCode | 46.5% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 4.9% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1556 | — |
| GSO | 47.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 82.9% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 39.9% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,564 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.1 (#110)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 48.9% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 29.5% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 8.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 39.7% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 50.2% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 33.8% | — |
| GBAEval | 70.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1204 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,787 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16)
- Gemma 3 27B: 16.7 (#301)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 88.8% | 40.4% |
| CritPt | 20.9% | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 34% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1482 | 1340 |
| DTBench | 94.9% | 52.5% |
| LMCA | 57.5% | 12.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 158.21 | 130.04 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | — |
| SimpleBench | 64.8% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 91.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 23.5% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 28.6% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 43.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 51.5% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 87.5% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.9 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.9 (#265)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.3% | 22.5% |
| LMArena Math | 1487 | 1312 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 80% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 91.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 69% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 55.4% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 74% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 47.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 31.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#29)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.5 (#261)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 91% | 47.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1502 | 1304 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 40.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26)
- Gemma 3 27B: 32.6 (#100)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1294 | 1164 |
| GeoBench | — | 52% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 14.5% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 42.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1475 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33)
- Gemma 3 27B: 46.9 (#155)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1450 | 1334 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1507 | 1346 |
| LMArena French | 1481 | 1368 |
| LMArena German | 1472 | 1362 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1440 | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | 1432 | 1308 |
| LMArena Russian | 1474 | 1349 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1466 | 1349 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24)
- Gemma 3 27B: 70.6 (#160)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1321 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 74.9% |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35)
- Gemma 3 27B: 27.6 (#293)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1483 | 1333 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 33.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16)
- Gemma 3 27B: 52.5 (#168)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1461 | 1358 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1454 | 1346 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1840 | 1266 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1476 | 1345 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 79.9% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1281 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 34.6% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Gemma 3 27B?

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 30.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 100× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Gemma 3 27B?

Gemma 3 27B is cheaper. It lists at $0.08 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.

### Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Gemma 3 27B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 22.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemma 3 27B share?

28 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 27B has 43.