Compare / Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemma 3 12B
Claude Sonnet 5 vs Gemma 3 12B
Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 18 results on 3 sources that measured both models.
Claude Sonnet 5 or Gemma 3 12B? The short answer
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper: $0.075 against $4.00 per million tokens, 53 times less.
- Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 38.2 against 3.8.
- On our business benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 5 ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.
- On our business benchmarks, Gemma 3 12B ranks higher for sticking to the facts.
At a glance
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 12B | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per million tokens | $2.00 in · $10.00 out | $0.050 in · $0.15 out |
| Blended (3 in : 1 out) | $4.00 | $0.075 |
| Cheapest host, blended | $4.00 (Claude Platform on AWS) | – |
| Intelligence Index | 38.2 | 3.8 |
| Spring Prompt overall | – | – |
| Output speed, tokens a second | – | – |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 131,072 tokens |
| Weights | Closed | Open |
| Developer based in | the US | the US |
Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.
Which is better for what
Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.
| Use case | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls | 33 of 161 | 147 of 161 |
| Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects | 19 of 51 | not measured |
| Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge | 32 of 195 | 195 of 195 |
| WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality | 36 of 187 | 149 of 187 |
| Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers | 84 of 153 | 5 of 153 |
Every shared result
| Benchmark | Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Business, management and financeArena rating | 1,465 | 1,386 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Creative writingArena rating | 1,435 | 1,332 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Expert promptsArena rating | 1,512 | 1,274 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Instruction followingArena rating | 1,467 | 1,321 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | OverallArena rating | 1,462 | 1,342 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Writing, literature and languageArena rating | 1,452 | 1,313 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Artificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score | 71.5 | 5.80 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score | 38.2 | 3.80 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | GPQA Diamond% of questions | 91.1% | 34.9% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Humanity's Last Exam% of questions | 41.3% | 4.2% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions | 82.0% | 8.3% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | SciCode% of problems | 54.3% | 16.4% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Terminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks | 80.5% | 0.0% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Terminal-Bench 4.0% of tasks | 14.1% | 0.0% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Τ-bench banking% of tasks | 37.3% | 0.8% |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Requested-length error% off the requested word count | 3.0% | 9.0% |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Style adherencescore from 0 to 1 | 0.38 | 0.29 |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Writing scorescore out of 100 | 62.7 | 29.9 |
Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.
Quick answers
Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Gemma 3 12B?
It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Claude Sonnet 5 ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing; Gemma 3 12B ranks higher for sticking to the facts.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Gemma 3 12B?
Gemma 3 12B costs $0.075 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $4.00 for Claude Sonnet 5.
Run Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemma 3 12B on your own prompt
Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.