# Claude Opus 5.5 vs Gemma 3 27B

> Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 30.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 80× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-gemma-3-27b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 23

## Summary

- They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 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 5.5 leads 91.8 to 25.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 100% for Claude Opus 5.5 and 22.5% for Gemma 3 27B.
- Gemma 3 27B is cheaper at $0.08 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
- Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 68.6 | 30.8 |
| Rank | 3 | 284 |
| Context | 1M | 131K |
| Input $/M | $4 | $0.08 |
| Output $/M | $20 | $0.16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 5.5: 71.9 (#3)
- Gemma 3 27B: 22.5 (#334)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 66.9% | 21.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1547 | 1322 |
| FrontierCode | 54.6% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 4.9% |
| CursorBench | 57.8% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1813 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 62.3% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 39.9% |
| MirrorCode | 77.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 2,147 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#15)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.1 (#110)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 73.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 29.5% |
| GDP.pdf | 30.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 9,235 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 5.5: 80.2 (#3)
- Gemma 3 27B: 16.7 (#301)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 31.7% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1535 | 1340 |
| DTBench | 98.9% | 52.5% |
| LMCA | 68.2% | 12.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 167.33 | 130.04 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 93.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 40.4% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 88.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 98.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| EBR-Bench | 71.4% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 43.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 71% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 51.5% |
| LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Math

- Claude Opus 5.5: 91.8 (#3)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.9 (#265)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | 22.5% |
| LMArena Math | 1506 | 1312 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 91.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 95% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 55.4% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 74% |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 2.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 5.5: 66.4 (#10)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.5 (#261)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.6% | 47.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1547 | 1304 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 72.2% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 40.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 5.5: 57.8 (#1)
- Gemma 3 27B: 32.6 (#100)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1321 | 1164 |
| GeoBench | — | 52% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 51.2% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 83.3% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 5.5: 59.1 (#2)
- Gemma 3 27B: 46.9 (#155)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1507 | 1334 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1588 | 1346 |
| LMArena French | 1514 | 1368 |
| LMArena Russian | 1520 | 1349 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1507 | 1349 |
| LMArena German | — | 1362 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1308 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 5.5: 80.0 (#3)
- Gemma 3 27B: 70.6 (#160)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1537 | 1321 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 74.9% |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 5.5: 47.1 (#19)
- Gemma 3 27B: 27.6 (#293)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1532 | 1333 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 33.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 5.5: 78.2 (#3)
- Gemma 3 27B: 52.5 (#168)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1515 | 1358 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1533 | 1346 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2050 | 1266 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1499 | 1345 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 79.9% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 34.6% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Gemma 3 27B?

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 30.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 80× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 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 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.

### Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Gemma 3 27B better for coding?

Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.9 versus 22.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and Gemma 3 27B share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 44 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 27B has 43.