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Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemma 4 12B

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 58.0 to 22.0.

Anthropic · Google · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 58.0 to 22.0, ranking #3 overall.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Claude Sonnet 5.5

  • overall performance matters — it scores 58.0 and ranks #3 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2026

Choose Gemma 4 12B

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic
Gemma 4 12B
Google
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
58.0
#3
22.0
#188
Reasoning
56.6
#3
22.9
#175
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$2.00 / M
— / M
Output price
$10.00 / M
— / M
Context window
1,000,000
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

3 shared
Index
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Gemma 4 12B
Math
36.9#34
18.4#183
Vision
40.0#3
10.9#120
Multimodal
40.1#2
17.0#85
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

47 reported for Claude Sonnet 5.5 · 15 for Gemma 4 12B

No common benchmarks found

Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemma 4 12Bdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 specifies input context (1,000,000 tokens). Only Claude Sonnet 5.5 specifies output context (128,000 tokens).

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Google
Gemma 4 12B
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Sun Oct 04 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Both Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemma 4 12B support multimodal inputs.

They are both capable of processing various types of data, offering versatility in application.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Gemma 4 12B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Gemma 4 12B uses Apache 2.0.

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

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Proprietary

Closed source

Gemma 4 12B

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude Sonnet 5.5 was released on 2026-09-28, while Gemma 4 12B was released on 2026-05-23.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 4 months newer than Gemma 4 12B.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Sep 28, 2026

6 days ago

4mo newer
Gemma 4 12B

May 23, 2026

4 months ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Claude Sonnet 5.5 has a knowledge cutoff of 2026-06-01, while Gemma 4 12B has a cutoff of 2025-01-01.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 has more recent training data (up to 2026-06-01), making it potentially better informed about events through that date compared to Gemma 4 12B (2025-01-01).

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Jun 2026

1.4 yr newer
Gemma 4 12B

Jan 2025

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemma 4 12B side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Claude Sonnet 5.5
✓ Preferred
Gemma 4 12B
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Gemma 4 12B.

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Gemma 4 12B?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 58.0 to 22.0. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is made by Anthropic and Gemma 4 12B is made by Google. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Claude Sonnet 5.5 compare to Gemma 4 12B in benchmarks?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores BenchCAD (with Python tool): 96.3%, ArXivMath (with tools): 95.2%, Global-MMLU: 92.1%, MILU: 91.6%, SWE-bench Multilingual: 90.3%. Gemma 4 12B scores FLEURS: 93.1%, MMMLU: 83.4%, MathVision: 79.7%, GPQA: 78.8%, AIME 2026: 77.5%.

What are the context window sizes for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemma 4 12B?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 supports 1.0M tokens and Gemma 4 12B 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 Sonnet 5.5 and Gemma 4 12B?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (58.0 vs 22.0), licensing (Proprietary vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemma 4 12B?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is developed by Anthropic and Gemma 4 12B is developed by Google.

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