Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) scores 11.8 points higher (20.7 vs 8.9) but costs 102× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $14.7; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 8.9 | −57.0% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 57.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $14.68 | −99.0% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 99.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.84s | 57.75s | +177.1% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 177.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.02 / $0.10 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 57.0% less intelligence, 99.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 177.1% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/gemma-4-e4b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/gemma-4-e4b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill