# Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemma 3 27B

> Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.5 to 30.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-vs-gemma-3-27b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in 6 categories and Gemma 3 27B in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 88.7 to 24.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 100% for Claude Sonnet 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 $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 60.5 | 30.5 |
| Rank | 10 | 277 |
| Context | 1M | 131K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.08 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $0.16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 65.5 (#6)
- Gemma 3 27B: 22.1 (#329)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 61% | 21.2% |
| FrontierCode | 52.1% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 4.9% |
| CursorBench | 55.5% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1699 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 61.9% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 39.9% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1322 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,819 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 44.9 (#14)
- Gemma 3 27B: 24.9 (#105)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 75.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 29.5% |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 52.4 (#29)
- Gemma 3 27B: 16.3 (#297)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 31.4% | 0% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 40.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 43.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1340 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 65% | — |
| DTBench | — | 52.5% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 51.5% |
| LMCA | — | 12.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 130.04 |
| LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 88.7 (#4)
- Gemma 3 27B: 24.4 (#261)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | 22.5% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 88.8% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 80.5% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1312 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 74% |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#11)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.4 (#256)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 95.6% | 47.7% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 46.5% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 40.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1303 |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 53.2 (#5)
- Gemma 3 27B: 32.0 (#94)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1165 |
| GeoBench | — | 52% |
| Furniture Assembly | 75% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: —
- Gemma 3 27B: 47.0 (#150)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1334 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena French | — | 1368 |
| LMArena German | — | 1362 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1308 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1349 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1348 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: —
- Gemma 3 27B: 70.8 (#155)

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

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: —
- Gemma 3 27B: 27.6 (#288)

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

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: —
- Gemma 3 27B: 52.7 (#161)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1358 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1346 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 79.9% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1266 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 34.6% |

## FAQ

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

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.5 to 30.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 5.5 lists at $2 and $10.

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

Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 65.5 versus 22.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

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

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

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5.5 has 16 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 27B has 43.