# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemma 3 27B

> Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 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's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

## Summary

- They share 27 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 5 leads 66.1 to 24.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.7% for Claude Sonnet 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.
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Google |
| Noometry Index | 54.5 | 30.5 |
| Rank | 26 | 277 |
| Context | 1M | 131K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.08 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $0.16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#20)
- Gemma 3 27B: 22.1 (#329)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 53.6% | 21.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1322 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 4.9% |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1540 | — |
| GSO | 37.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 39.9% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.7 (#16)
- Gemma 3 27B: 24.9 (#105)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 29.5% |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5: 48.2 (#37)
- Gemma 3 27B: 16.3 (#297)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 16.9% | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1340 |
| DTBench | 92.5% | 52.5% |
| LMCA | 50% | 12.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.34 | 130.04 |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 40.4% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 43.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 51.5% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 5: 66.1 (#21)
- Gemma 3 27B: 24.4 (#261)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | 22.5% |
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1312 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 55.4% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 74% |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.7 (#42)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.4 (#256)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 47.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1491 | 1303 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 40.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#26)
- Gemma 3 27B: 32.0 (#94)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1275 | 1165 |
| GeoBench | — | 52% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5: 54.0 (#55)
- Gemma 3 27B: 47.0 (#150)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1334 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1475 | 1347 |
| LMArena French | 1457 | 1368 |
| LMArena German | 1448 | 1362 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1308 |
| LMArena Russian | 1452 | 1349 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1436 | 1348 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5: 76.6 (#39)
- Gemma 3 27B: 70.8 (#155)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1453 | 1321 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 74.9% |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#53)
- Gemma 3 27B: 27.6 (#288)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1464 | 1333 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 33.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5: 69.4 (#24)
- Gemma 3 27B: 52.7 (#161)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1358 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1346 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | 1266 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1344 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 79.9% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 34.6% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Gemma 3 27B?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 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's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Gemma 3 27B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 22.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemma 3 27B share?

27 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 27B has 43.