# Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct

> Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-phi-3-small-8k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 70.2 to 31.1.
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 50.3 | 29.3 |
| Rank | 50 | 314 |
| Context | 1M | — |
| Input $/M | $3 | — |
| Output $/M | $15 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1101 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1522 | — |
| SciCode | 46.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 20.3% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 43% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | 1100 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| CritPt | 3.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 15.9% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| DTBench | 89.9% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 30.3% |
| LMCA | 46.5% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 58.1% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.24 | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
| HellaSwag | — | 77% |
| LiveBench | — | 24% |
| WinoGrande | — | 81.5% |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1462 | 1151 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 17.6% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1067 |
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 90.7% |
| MMLU | — | 75.7% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 88% |
| TriviaQA | — | 58.1% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1058 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1061 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | 1135 |
| LMArena German | 1428 | 1080 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1420 | 966 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 894 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1111 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | 1111 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1475 | 1087 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 47.2% |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1088 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1110 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1083 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1068 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 12.9% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32.