Model comparison
Amazon Nova Lite vs Gemma 3 12B
Amazon Nova Lite and Gemma 3 12B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.9 vs 32.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
GoogleSummary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 3 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where Gemma 3 12B leads 68.6 to 59.3.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.06 / $0.24 for Amazon Nova Lite.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 32.1 |
| Released | 2024-12-03 | 2025-03-12 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 300K | 131K |
| Max output | 10K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.06 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.24 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 34 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270), Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1281 |
| SciCode | — | 17.4% |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Amazon Nova Lite: —, Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 30.4% |
Reasoning Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260), Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1309 |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| DTBench | — | 48.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| LMCA | — | 4.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 123.5 |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |
Math Amazon Nova Lite leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247), Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1227 | 1307 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 16.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |
Knowledge Too close to call
Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259), Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | 4.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1248 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 39.5% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | — |
| MMLU | 77% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123), Gemma 3 12B: —
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |
| MindCube | — | 46.7% |
Multilingual Gemma 3 12B leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232), Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1318 |
| LMArena German | 1229 | 1370 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1335 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | — |
| LMArena French | 1237 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | — |
Instruction Following Gemma 3 12B leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255), Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1299 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |
| IFEval | 77.6% | — |
Long Context Gemma 3 12B leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217), Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1317 |
Writing & Preference Gemma 3 12B leads
Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237), Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1334 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1331 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1334 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1126 |
| WildBench | 75% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Amazon Nova Lite better than Gemma 3 12B?
Amazon Nova Lite and Gemma 3 12B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.9 vs 32.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or Gemma 3 12B?
Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Amazon Nova Lite lists at $0.06 and $0.24.
Is Amazon Nova Lite or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (32.5 vs 31.7); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and Gemma 3 12B share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.