Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Opus 4.8
95
Gemma 4 12B
53
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.8 #4 · Gemma 4 12B unranked
Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority.
Coding
+4.4 difference
Knowledge
+7.7 difference
Multimodal
+7.0 difference
Claude Opus 4.8
Gemma 4 12B
$5 / $25
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
1M
256K
Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority.
Claude Opus 4.8 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 95 to 53. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Opus 4.8's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 76.1 against 69.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 93.6% to 78.8%. Gemma 4 12B does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude Opus 4.8 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 256K for Gemma 4 12B.
Claude Opus 4.8 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 95 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 93.6% and 78.8%.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.8 versus 70.1. Inside this category, HLE w/o tools is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 76.4 versus 72. Gemma 4 12B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 76.1 versus 69.1. Gemma 4 12B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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