Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) vs Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) 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 (Xhigh) scores 25.5 points higher (34.4 vs 8.9) but costs 222× as much to run the benchmark ($3255 vs $14.7; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 8.9, and Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) | Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.4 | 8.9 | −74.1% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 74.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,255.40 | $14.68 | −99.5% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 99.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.97s | 57.75s | +175.4% Gemma 4 E4B (Reasonin… is 175.4% 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 (Xhigh): 74.1% less intelligence, 99.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 175.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
- 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 (Xhigh)Gemma 4 E4B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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