Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Medium) 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 Opus 5 (Medium) scores 35.9 points higher (44.8 vs 8.9) but costs 186× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $14.7; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.8 | 8.9 | −80.1% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 80.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,731.91 | $14.68 | −99.5% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 99.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.14s | 57.75s | +339.5% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 339.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.02 / $0.10 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium): 80.1% less intelligence, 99.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 339.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
- 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 Opus 5 (Medium)Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/gemma-4-e4b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/gemma-4-e4b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill