Claude 3 Sonnet vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct are closely matched at 1.9 and 1.9 on the LLM Stats Score.
Anthropic · Microsoft · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 1.9 and 1.9.
In the 10 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Claude 3 Sonnet wins 9; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.
Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose Claude 3 Sonnet
- you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 9 of 10 exact shared results
Choose Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Aug 2024
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Capability indexes
Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks
Individual benchmarks
11 reported for Claude 3 Sonnet · 31 for Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Claude 3 Sonnet outperforms in 9 benchmarks (ARC-C, BIG-Bench Hard, GPQA, GSM8k, HellaSwag, HumanEval, MGSM, MMLU, MMLU-Pro), while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is better at 1 benchmark (MATH).
Claude 3 Sonnet significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only Claude 3 Sonnet specifies input context (200,000 tokens). Only Claude 3 Sonnet specifies output context (200,000 tokens).
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Claude 3 Sonnet supports multimodal inputs, whereas Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct does not.
Claude 3 Sonnet can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Claude 3 Sonnet
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
License
Usage and distribution terms
Claude 3 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.
Proprietary
Closed source
MIT
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Claude 3 Sonnet was released on 2024-02-29, while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct was released on 2024-08-23.
Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is 6 months newer than Claude 3 Sonnet.
Feb 29, 2024
2.5 years ago
Aug 23, 2024
2.0 years ago
5mo newerKnowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Claude 3 Sonnet and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Claude 3 Sonnet vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct.