Head-to-head comparison across 4benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Opus 4.5
76
Gemma 4 12B
53
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.5 #14 · Gemma 4 12B unranked
Pick Claude Opus 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
Coding
+6.1 difference
Reasoning
+21.0 difference
Knowledge
+11.6 difference
Multimodal
+0.9 difference
Claude Opus 4.5
Gemma 4 12B
$5 / $25
N/A
46 t/s
N/A
1.01s
N/A
200K
256K
Pick Claude Opus 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
Claude Opus 4.5 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 76 to 53. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Opus 4.5's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 64.4 against 43.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU-Pro, 89.5% to 77.2%. Gemma 4 12B does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Gemma 4 12B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Opus 4.5 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 Opus 4.5.
Claude Opus 4.5 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 76 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU-Pro, where the scores are 89.5% and 77.2%.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.8 versus 66.2. Inside this category, MMLU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 65.9. Claude Opus 4.5 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 64.4 versus 43.4. Gemma 4 12B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 70 versus 69.1. Inside this category, MathVision is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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