Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 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 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) scores 19.2 points higher (28.1 vs 8.9) but costs 83× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $14.7; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 8.9 | −68.3% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 68.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $14.68 | −98.8% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 98.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.58s | 57.72s | +572.7% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 572.7% 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 (Medium): 68.3% less intelligence, 98.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 572.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- 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 (Medium)Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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