Model comparison
Gemma 3 12B vs Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5'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 0 categories and Grok 4.5 in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.5 leads 56.0 to 15.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 97.8% for Grok 4.5.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Grok 4.5.
- Grok 4.5 accepts more context: 500K tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | |
| Noometry Index | 31.8 | 55.0 |
| Released | 2025-03-12 | 2026-07-08 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | 500K |
| Max output | 8K | 500K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $2 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $6 |
| Results tracked | 24 | 52 |
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Category by category
Coding Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276), Grok 4.5: 51.7 (#34)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 17.4% | 54.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1473 |
| DeepSWE | — | 53.8% |
| FrontierCode | — | 42.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1552 |
| WeirdML | — | 46.4% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 1,309 |
Agentic & Tool Use Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101), Grok 4.5: 44.4 (#15)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | — | 56.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 47.9% |
| PostTrainBench | — | 23.4% |
| GBAEval | — | 65.4% |
| GDP.pdf | — | 14% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1213 |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 3,887 |
Reasoning Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307), Grok 4.5: 56.0 (#23)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 15.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 36% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1462 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 96.5% |
| LMCA | 4.5% | 45.2% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.49 | 154.02 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 52.6% |
| SimpleBench | — | 70% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 83.5% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 79.9% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 87.2% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 74.4% |
Math Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273), Grok 4.5: 60.7 (#29)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 97.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1457 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 57.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 24.4% |
| ProofBench | — | 31% |
Knowledge Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250), Grok 4.5: 62.3 (#21)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 93.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1466 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 48.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: —, Grok 4.5: 37.8 (#63)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1287 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | — | 27.3% |
| Furniture Assembly | — | 22.5% |
| LMArena Document | — | 1452 |
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |
Multilingual Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160), Grok 4.5: 54.5 (#43)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1439 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1448 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1447 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1497 |
| LMArena French | — | 1458 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1425 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1402 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1452 |
Instruction Following Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179), Grok 4.5: 76.3 (#45)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1446 |
Long Context Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157), Grok 4.5: 44.8 (#54)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1463 |
Writing & Preference Grok 4.5 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205), Grok 4.5: 65.9 (#40)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1448 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1442 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | 1579 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1457 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemma 3 12B better than Grok 4.5?
Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Grok 4.5?
Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Grok 4.5 lists at $2 and $6.
Is Gemma 3 12B or Grok 4.5 better for coding?
Grok 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 51.7 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Grok 4.5 does, with 500K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Grok 4.5 share?
21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Grok 4.5 has 52.