Model comparison
Gemma 3 12B vs Llama 3-70B
Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 32.1 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
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MetaSummary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 7 categories and Llama 3-70B in 2 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multilingual, where Gemma 3 12B leads 45.7 to 33.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 4.3% for Llama 3-70B.
Side by side
| Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 28.8 |
| Released | 2025-03-12 | 2024-04-18 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | — |
| Max output | 8K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | — |
| Results tracked | 24 | 31 |
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Category by category
Coding Llama 3-70B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280), Llama 3-70B: 35.8 (#218)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1206 |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 43.6% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 54.5% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 72% |
| MBPP+ | — | 69% |
Agentic & Tool Use Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108), Llama 3-70B: 21.1 (#139)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |
| Cybench | — | 5% |
Reasoning Llama 3-70B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313), Llama 3-70B: 18.0 (#288)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1195 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 54.2% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | 122.93 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 35.1% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMCA | 4.5% | — |
| ForecastBench | — | 57.1 |
| WinoGrande | — | 83.5% |
Math Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279), Llama 3-70B: 12.8 (#305)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 4.3% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1218 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 22.6% |
Knowledge Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257), Llama 3-70B: 20.8 (#277)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 40.6% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1149 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |
| MMLU | — | 79.3% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: —, Llama 3-70B: —
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |
Multilingual Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165), Llama 3-70B: 33.6 (#251)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1142 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1169 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1159 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1114 |
| LMArena French | — | 1232 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1017 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1017 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1241 |
Instruction Following Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186), Llama 3-70B: 62.5 (#238)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1194 |
Long Context Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162), Llama 3-70B: 35.6 (#240)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1174 |
Writing & Preference Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209), Llama 3-70B: 42.8 (#231)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 3-70B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1221 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1210 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1223 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemma 3 12B better than Llama 3-70B?
Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 32.1 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.
Is Gemma 3 12B or Llama 3-70B better for coding?
Llama 3-70B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.8 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Llama 3-70B share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3-70B has 31.