Claude Opus 4.8 vs Gemma 4 12B
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Claude Opus 4.8 is meaningfully stronger at coding (96 vs 68 on our capability index).
- •Gemma 4 12B is meaningfully stronger at cost efficiency (92 vs 70).
- •Gemma 4 12B is open-weights (free to self-host); Claude Opus 4.8 is paid API only.
- •Claude Opus 4.8 has a 1M context window vs 256K tokens - better for whole-repo or long-document work.
Specs comparison
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 12B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Type | Closed source | Open source |
| Context window | ✓1M | 256K tokens |
| Input / 1M tokens | $5.00 | ✓Free (self-host) |
| Output / 1M tokens | $25.00 | Free (self-host) |
| Release date | 2026-05 | 2026-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Gemma 4 12B |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 88.6% | - |
| SWE-bench Pro | 69.2% | - |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 74.6% | - |
| GPQA Diamond | 93.6% | - |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index | 61.4 | - |
| Total parameters | - | ~11.95B |
| Context window | - | 256K tokens |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts and independent benchmark aggregators.
Which should you choose?
Choose Claude Opus 4.8 if...
- →You need top-tier autonomous coding and multi-step agentic reliability
- →You run long-horizon agent traces that previously derailed after compaction
- →You want enterprise-grade reasoning with 1M context and 128k output
- →You need throughput and are willing to pay fast-mode premium for 2.5x speed
Choose Gemma 4 12B if...
- →You need an open, self-hostable multimodal model
- →Running on a single consumer GPU or a laptop
- →Data-privacy or on-prem requirements
- →You want a permissive license (Apache 2.0) for commercial use