Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) 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.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) scores 21.2 points higher (30.1 vs 8.9) but costs 335× as much to run the benchmark ($4925 vs $14.7; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.1 | 8.9 | −70.4% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 70.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,924.80 | $14.68 | −99.7% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 99.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 72.96s | 57.72s | −20.9% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 20.9% faster |
| 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 70.4% less intelligence, 99.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 20.9% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max)Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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