Noometry

Model comparison

Gemma 3 12B vs Mistral Small 3.1

Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3.1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 31.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Gemma 3 12B Google

32.1

Rank #262 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.1 Mistral AI

31.7

Rank #269 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 6 categories and Mistral Small 3.1 in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Gemma 3 12B leads 47.5 to 37.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 3.9% for Mistral Small 3.1.
  • Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.35 / $0.56 for Mistral Small 3.1.
  • Gemma 3 12B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Gemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
ProviderGoogleMistral AI
Noometry Index32.131.7
Released2025-03-122025-03-17
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window131K128K
Max output8K102K
Input $ / M tokens$0.05$0.35
Output $ / M tokens$0.15$0.56
Results tracked2428

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Category by category

Coding Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280), Mistral Small 3.1: 38.3 (#179)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Coding12811309
SciCode17.4%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108), Mistral Small 3.1: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard30.4%—

Reasoning Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313), Mistral Small 3.1: 19.7 (#254)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
Chess Puzzles0%1%
LMArena Hard Prompts13091278
Epoch Capabilities Index123.5127.48
CritPt0%—
DTBench48.8%—
LMCA4.5%—

Math Gemma 3 12B leads

Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279), Mistral Small 3.1: 14.7 (#301)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202516.7%3.9%
LMArena Math13071262
Omni-MATH—24.8%

Knowledge Gemma 3 12B leads

Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257), Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#271)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
GPQA Diamond39.5%41.9%
LMArena Expert12481257
MMLU-Pro—61%
Vectara Hallucination Rate4.4%—
GPQA (HELM)—39.2%

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: —, Mistral Small 3.1: 33.2 (#99)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Vision—1136
MindCube46.7%—

Multilingual Gemma 3 12B leads

Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165), Mistral Small 3.1: 41.2 (#209)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Non-English13181255
LMArena German13701266
LMArena Russian13351263
LMArena Chinese—1253
LMArena French—1273
LMArena Japanese—1208
LMArena Korean—1206
LMArena Spanish—1283

Instruction Following Gemma 3 12B leads

Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186), Mistral Small 3.1: 63.6 (#230)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Instruction Following12991264
IFEval—75%

Long Context Too close to call

Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162), Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#178)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Longer Query13171299

Writing & Preference Gemma 3 12B leads

Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209), Mistral Small 3.1: 37.0 (#259)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Text13341277
LMArena Creative Writing13311253
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1126761
LMArena Multi-Turn13341270
WildBench—78.8%

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemma 3 12B better than Mistral Small 3.1?

Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3.1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 31.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Mistral Small 3.1?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3.1 lists at $0.35 and $0.56.

Is Gemma 3 12B or Mistral Small 3.1 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.3 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemma 3 12B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3.1 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.1 has 28.

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