Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, 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 2026-10-24.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… scores 47.1 points higher (56.0 vs 8.9) but costs 276× as much to run the benchmark ($4057 vs $14.7; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 56.0 | 8.9 | −84.1% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 84.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,056.65 | $14.68 | −99.6% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 99.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 123.06s | 57.75s | −53.1% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 53.1% faster |
| 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallback): 84.1% less intelligence, 99.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 53.1% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, 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-xhigh/gemma-4-e4b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-xhigh/gemma-4-e4b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill