Model comparison
Gemma 3 12B vs GPT-5 Nano
GPT-5 Nano is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5 Nano's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.
GoogleSummary
- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 3 categories and GPT-5 Nano in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where GPT-5 Nano leads 35.8 to 26.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 81.1% for GPT-5 Nano.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.05 / $0.40 for GPT-5 Nano.
- GPT-5 Nano accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | |
| Noometry Index | 31.8 | 33.4 |
| Released | 2025-03-12 | 2025-08-07 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | 400K |
| Max output | 8K | 128K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.40 |
| Results tracked | 24 | 48 |
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Category by category
Coding GPT-5 Nano leads
Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276), GPT-5 Nano: 33.3 (#248)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1351 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 34.8% |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| WeirdML | — | 38.1% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 718.67 |
Agentic & Tool Use Too close to call
Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101), GPT-5 Nano: 25.6 (#99)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | 51.5% |
| Terminal-Bench | — | 21.8% |
Reasoning GPT-5 Nano leads
Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307), GPT-5 Nano: 16.4 (#291)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 27% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1329 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 62.7% |
| LMCA | 4.5% | 7.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.49 | 139.39 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 2.6% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 62.2% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 20.7% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 9% |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.1 |
Math GPT-5 Nano leads
Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273), GPT-5 Nano: 29.1 (#221)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 81.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1318 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 20% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 2.4% |
| ProofBench | — | 12% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 54.6% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 95.2% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 8.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 2.1% |
Knowledge GPT-5 Nano leads
Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250), GPT-5 Nano: 35.8 (#166)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 69.4% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | 10.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1321 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 11.7% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 77.8% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 67.9% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: —, GPT-5 Nano: 30.7 (#102)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1159 |
| VPCT | — | 37.2% |
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |
Multilingual Too close to call
Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160), GPT-5 Nano: 45.5 (#167)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1313 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1329 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1296 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1355 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1269 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1360 |
Instruction Following GPT-5 Nano leads
Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179), GPT-5 Nano: 75.2 (#72)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1306 |
| IFEval | — | 93.2% |
Long Context Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157), GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#275)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1313 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 44.4% |
Writing & Preference Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205), GPT-5 Nano: 39.4 (#244)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-5 Nano |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1320 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1250 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | 705 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1311 |
| WildBench | — | 80.6% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemma 3 12B better than GPT-5 Nano?
GPT-5 Nano is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5 Nano's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or GPT-5 Nano?
Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; GPT-5 Nano lists at $0.05 and $0.40.
Is Gemma 3 12B or GPT-5 Nano better for coding?
GPT-5 Nano scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.3 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
GPT-5 Nano does, with 400K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and GPT-5 Nano share?
21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and GPT-5 Nano has 48.