Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) 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 Sonnet 5 (Low) scores 15.4 points higher (24.3 vs 8.9) but costs 44× as much to run the benchmark ($653 vs $14.7; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 8.9 | −63.4% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 63.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $14.68 | −97.8% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 97.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.60s | 57.75s | +571.5% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 571.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.02 / $0.10 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Speech, Video |
Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 63.4% less intelligence, 97.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 571.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- 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 5 (Low)Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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