Model comparison
Gemma 3 12B vs Mistral Small 3
Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 31.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
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Mistral AISummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 6 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 2 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Gemma 3 12B leads 47.5 to 32.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 6.7% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.05 / $0.15 for Gemma 3 12B.
- Gemma 3 12B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 31.2 |
| Released | 2025-03-12 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 33K |
| Max output | 8K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 24 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Mistral Small 3 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280), Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1246 |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |
Reasoning Mistral Small 3 leads
Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | 127.07 |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| DTBench | 48.8% | — |
| LMCA | 4.5% | — |
Math Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279), Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1240 |
Knowledge Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257), Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 47.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1202 |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: —, Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |
Multilingual Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165), Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1198 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1211 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1216 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1204 |
| LMArena French | — | 1203 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
Instruction Following Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1214 |
Long Context Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1246 |
Writing & Preference Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1217 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemma 3 12B better than Mistral Small 3?
Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 31.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Gemma 3 12B lists at $0.05 and $0.15.
Is Gemma 3 12B or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Gemma 3 12B does, with 131K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3 share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.