Model Comparison

Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instructWhich is better in 2026?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Verdict: Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct — which is better?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet (by Anthropic) and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct (by Microsoft) are two of the AI models people compare most. Here is how they stack up on benchmarks, price and capabilities, and which one to pick in 2026.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms in 8 benchmarks (BIG-Bench Hard, GPQA, GSM8k, HumanEval, MATH, MGSM, MMLU, MMLU-Pro), while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is better at 0 benchmarks. Claude 3.5 Sonnet significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet if…

  • you want the strongest raw capability — it leads on 8 of 8 shared benchmarks
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2024

Choose Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct if…

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
Want to compare interactively?Try the playground

Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

8 benchmarks

Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms in 8 benchmarks (BIG-Bench Hard, GPQA, GSM8k, HumanEval, MATH, MGSM, MMLU, MMLU-Pro), while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is better at 0 benchmarks.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Wed Jun 17 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Human preference votes

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Claude 3.5 Sonnet specifies input context (200,000 tokens). Only Claude 3.5 Sonnet specifies output context (200,000 tokens).

Anthropic
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Input200,000 tokens
Output200,000 tokens
Microsoft
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Wed Jun 17 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Claude 3.5 Sonnet supports multimodal inputs, whereas Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct does not.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is licensed under a proprietary license, while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct uses MIT.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Proprietary

Closed source

Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

MIT

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude 3.5 Sonnet was released on 2024-10-22, while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct was released on 2024-08-23.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is 2 months newer than Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Oct 22, 2024

1.7 years ago

2mo newer
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

Aug 23, 2024

1.8 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Key Takeaways

Anthropic
Larger context window (200,000 tokens)
Supports multimodal inputs
Higher BIG-Bench Hard score (93.1% vs 79.1%)
Higher GPQA score (67.2% vs 36.8%)
Higher GSM8k score (96.4% vs 88.7%)
Higher HumanEval score (93.7% vs 70.7%)
Higher MATH score (78.3% vs 59.5%)
Higher MGSM score (91.6% vs 58.7%)
Higher MMLU score (90.4% vs 78.9%)
Higher MMLU-Pro score (77.6% vs 45.3%)
Microsoft
Has open weights

Detailed Comparison

AI Model Comparison Table
Feature
Anthropic
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Microsoft
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct

FAQ

Common questions about Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct.

Which is better, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet significantly outperforms across most benchmarks. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is made by Anthropic and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is made by Microsoft. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their benchmark scores, pricing, and capabilities above.

How does Claude 3.5 Sonnet compare to Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct in benchmarks?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores GSM8k: 96.4%, DocVQA: 95.2%, AI2D: 94.7%, HumanEval: 93.7%, BIG-Bench Hard: 93.1%. Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct scores ARC-C: 91.0%, OpenBookQA: 89.6%, GSM8k: 88.7%, PIQA: 88.6%, RULER: 87.1%.

What are the context window sizes for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet supports 200K tokens and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Key differences include multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Proprietary vs MIT). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is developed by Anthropic and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is developed by Microsoft.

Related comparisons