Model comparison
Gemma 3 12B vs Mistral Large
Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Large score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 31.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 22 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 5 categories and Mistral Large in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Gemma 3 12B leads 47.5 to 40.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 17.4% for Gemma 3 12B and 36.2% for Mistral Large.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Mistral Large.
Side by side
| Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 31.9 |
| Released | 2025-03-12 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 131K |
| Max output | 8K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $2 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $6 |
| Results tracked | 24 | 51 |
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Category by category
Coding Mistral Large leads
Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280), Mistral Large: 34.3 (#240)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 17.4% | 36.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1277 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 30% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 47.1% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 38.3% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 264.7 |
| HumanEval+ | — | 62.2% |
| MBPP+ | — | 59.5% |
Agentic & Tool Use Mistral Large leads
Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108), Mistral Large: 28.6 (#89)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | 38.4% |
Reasoning Too close to call
Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313), Mistral Large: 15.8 (#310)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1257 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 65.1% |
| LMCA | 4.5% | 16.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | 128.52 |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 43.5% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 50.1% |
| ForecastBench | — | 57.1 |
| LiveBench | — | 48.4% |
Math Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279), Mistral Large: 18.2 (#291)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 8.5% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1262 |
| Omni-MATH | — | 28.1% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 42.5% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 50.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 0.3% |
Knowledge Mistral Large leads
Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257), Mistral Large: 30.1 (#230)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 51.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | 4.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1232 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 59.9% |
| Confabulations | — | 21.4% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 43.5% |
| MMLU | — | 80% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: —, Mistral Large: —
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |
Multilingual Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165), Mistral Large: 40.0 (#219)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1237 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1254 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1257 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1240 |
| LMArena French | — | 1325 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1202 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1268 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186), Mistral Large: 67.9 (#191)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1249 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 67.9% |
| IFEval | — | 87.7% |
Long Context Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162), Mistral Large: 38.3 (#199)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1261 |
Writing & Preference Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209), Mistral Large: 40.7 (#242)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1266 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1243 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | 985 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1260 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 69% |
| WildBench | — | 80.1% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 39.4% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemma 3 12B better than Mistral Large?
Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Large score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 31.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Mistral Large?
Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mistral Large lists at $2 and $6.
Is Gemma 3 12B or Mistral Large better for coding?
Mistral Large scores higher on coding benchmarks: 34.3 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 131K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Large share?
22 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Large has 51.