Head-to-head comparison across 1benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude 4.1 Opus
51
Gemma 4 12B
53
Pick Gemma 4 12B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 4.1 Opus only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
Coding
+2.5 difference
Claude 4.1 Opus
Gemma 4 12B
$15 / $75
N/A
29 t/s
N/A
1.66s
N/A
200K
256K
Pick Gemma 4 12B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 4.1 Opus only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
Gemma 4 12B has the cleaner provisional overall profile here, landing at 53 versus 51. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.
Gemma 4 12B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 4.1 Opus is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Gemma 4 12B gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for Claude 4.1 Opus.
Gemma 4 12B is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 53 to 51.
Claude 4.1 Opus has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 74.5 versus 72. Gemma 4 12B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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