Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) by Google? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 44.7 points higher (53.6 vs 8.9) but costs 148× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $14.7; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 8.9 | −83.4% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 83.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $14.68 | −99.3% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 99.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.58s | 56.02s | +66.8% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 66.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.02 / $0.10 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 83.4% less intelligence, 99.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 66.8% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/gemma-4-e4b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/gemma-4-e4b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill