Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Sonnet 4.6
83
Gemma 4 12B
53
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
Coding
+5.6 difference
Knowledge
+4.1 difference
Multimodal
+8.3 difference
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Gemma 4 12B
$3 / $15
N/A
44 t/s
N/A
1.48s
N/A
200K
256K
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 83 to 53. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Sonnet 4.6's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 77.4 against 69.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 89.9% to 78.8%. Gemma 4 12B does hit back in coding, 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 Sonnet 4.6 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 Sonnet 4.6.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 83 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 89.9% and 78.8%.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.8 versus 73.7. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 66.4. Claude Sonnet 4.6 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.4 versus 69.1. Gemma 4 12B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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