AiCostCompare

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Llama Guard 4 12B

Side-by-side API pricing and Artificial Analysis performance for Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic) and Llama Guard 4 12B (Meta). Green cells mark the better value in each row.

Prices updated Jul 22, 2026, 3:54 AM UTC · refreshed hourly

Claude Sonnet 5

Anthropic

Llama Guard 4 12B

Meta

Pricing
Input $/1M$2.00$0.18
Output $/1M$10.00$0.18
Blended $/1M (3:1)$4.00$0.18
RAG example (30K in / 2K out)$0.08$0.00576
Quality & speed
Intelligence Index53.4
Coding Index71.5
Agentic Index46.7
Output speed (tok/s)88
Time to first token93.55s
Specs
Context window1M1.05M
Input modalitiestext, image, fileimage, text

FAQ

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Llama Guard 4 12B?

Llama Guard 4 12B has the lower blended API price at $0.18 per 1M tokens (3:1 input:output mix), versus $4.00 for the other model. Prices are live from OpenRouter and refresh about hourly.

Which is better for RAG workloads?

For a typical RAG request (30K input / 2K output tokens), Llama Guard 4 12B costs about $0.00576 per request versus $0.08. Also compare context windows: Claude Sonnet 5 offers 1M and Llama Guard 4 12B offers 1.05M.

Which scores higher on Artificial Analysis benchmarks?

Claude Sonnet 5 leads on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (53.4 vs —). Check coding and agentic indices on this page for workload-specific tradeoffs.