Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemma 4 12B
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Claude Sonnet 4.6 is meaningfully stronger at coding (85 vs 68 on our capability index).
- •Gemma 4 12B is open-weights (free to self-host); Claude Sonnet 4.6 is paid API only.
- •Claude Sonnet 4.6 has a 1M context window vs 256K tokens - better for whole-repo or long-document work.
Specs comparison
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemma 4 12B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Type | Closed source | Open source |
| Context window | ✓1M | 256K tokens |
| Input / 1M tokens | $3.00 | ✓Free (self-host) |
| Output / 1M tokens | $15.00 | Free (self-host) |
| Release date | 2026-02 | 2026-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Gemma 4 12B |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 79.6% | - |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.1% | - |
| OSWorld-Verified | 72.5% | - |
| GPQA | 79.7% | - |
| 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 Sonnet 4.6 if...
- →You have an existing integration pinned to Sonnet 4.6 and want stability
- →You need a proven mid-tier model with 1M context at $3/$15
- →You want predictable behavior without the new-tokenizer/thinking changes in Sonnet 5
- →You are cost-sensitive and don't need Sonnet 5's incremental gains
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