Model comparison

Gemma 3 12B vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.2 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 13 shared benchmarks.

Gemma 3 12B

Google

32.1

Rank #262 Confirmed

Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral AI

40.2

Rank #152 Confirmed

Summary

They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 0 categories and Mistral Medium 3.5 in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in math, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 39.1 to 22.3.
Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.
Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Medium 3.5 specifications
	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
Provider	Google	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	32.1	40.2
Released	2025-03-12	—
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	262K
Max output	8K	210K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.05	$1.50
Output $ / M tokens	$0.15	$7.50
Results tracked	24	22

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280), Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Coding	1281	1461
LMArena WebDev	—	1264
SciCode	17.4%	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108), Mistral Medium 3.5: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	30.4%	—

Reasoning Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313), Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Hard Prompts	1309	1436
Epoch Capabilities Index	123.5	141.35
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	41.4%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	12.9%
CritPt	0%	—
Chess Puzzles	0%	—
DTBench	48.8%	—
LMCA	4.5%	—

Math Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279), Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Math	1307	1431
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	16.7%	—

Knowledge Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257), Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Expert	1248	1432
GPQA Diamond	39.5%	—
Vectara Hallucination Rate	4.4%	—

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Vision	—	1223
MindCube	46.7%	—

Multilingual Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165), Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Non-English	1318	1404
LMArena German	1370	1451
LMArena Russian	1335	1395
LMArena Chinese	—	1442
LMArena French	—	1448
LMArena Korean	—	1385
LMArena Spanish	—	1409

Instruction Following Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186), Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Instruction Following	1299	1415

Long Context Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162), Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Longer Query	1317	1415

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209), Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 12B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Text	1334	1421
LMArena Creative Writing	1331	1374
LMArena Multi-Turn	1334	1423
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	1126	—
EQ-Bench 4	—	993

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemma 3 12B better than Mistral Medium 3.5?

Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Mistral Medium 3.5?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Is Gemma 3 12B or Mistral Medium 3.5 better for coding?

Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium 3.5 does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Medium 3.5 share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22.