Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking vs Gemma 4 26B A4B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking· Gemma 4 26B A4B

Quick Verdict

Pick Gemma 4 26B A4B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority.

Gemma 4 26B A4B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 64 to 57. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Gemma 4 26B A4B's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 77.1 against 45.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 45% to 77.1%. Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking does hit back in reasoning, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Gemma 4 26B A4B gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking.

Operational tradeoffs

PricePricing unavailableFree*
Speed29 t/sN/A
TTFT15.00sN/A
Context200K256K

Decision framing

BenchLM keeps the benchmark table and the operator tradeoffs on the same page so a better score does not hide a materially slower, pricier, or smaller-context model.

Runtime metrics show N/A when BenchLM does not have a sourced snapshot for that exact model. The scoring rules and freshness policy are documented on the methodology page.

BenchmarkClaude 4.1 Opus ThinkingGemma 4 26B A4B
Agentic
BrowseComp54%
CodingGemma 4 26B A4B wins
SWE-bench Verified74.5%
LiveCodeBench45%77.1%
SWE-bench Pro29%
Multimodal & GroundedGemma 4 26B A4B wins
OfficeQA Pro69%
MMMU-Pro73.8%
ReasoningClaude 4.1 Opus Thinking wins
MuSR72%
MRCRv274%44.1%
BBH64.8%
KnowledgeGemma 4 26B A4B wins
MMLU76%
GPQA80.9%82.3%
SuperGPQA72%
MMLU-Pro76%82.6%
HLE8%17.2%
FrontierScience41%
SimpleQA36%
HLE w/o tools8.7%
Instruction Following
Coming soon
Multilingual
MGSM82%
MMLU-ProX73%
Mathematics
AIME 202440%
HMMT Feb 202436%
HMMT Feb 202535%
Frequently Asked Questions (5)

Which is better, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Gemma 4 26B A4B?

Gemma 4 26B A4B is ahead overall, 64 to 57. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 45% and 77.1%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Gemma 4 26B A4B?

Gemma 4 26B A4B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.1 versus 49. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Gemma 4 26B A4B?

Gemma 4 26B A4B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 77.1 versus 45.7. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Gemma 4 26B A4B?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 73.1 versus 44.1. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or Gemma 4 26B A4B?

Gemma 4 26B A4B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 73.8 versus 69. Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.

Last updated: April 2, 2026

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