Noometry

Model comparison

Gemma 3 12B vs Mistral Small 3.2

Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3.2 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 . 5 shared benchmarks.

Gemma 3 12B Google

32.1

Rank #262 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.2 Mistral AI

31.2

Rank #280 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Small 3.2 in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Mistral Small 3.2 leads 26.3 to 22.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 30.3% for Mistral Small 3.2.
  • Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.0938 / $0.25 for Mistral Small 3.2.
  • Mistral Small 3.2 accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

Gemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
ProviderGoogleMistral AI
Noometry Index32.131.2
Released2025-03-122025-06-20
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window131K256K
Max output8K16K
Input $ / M tokens$0.05$0.0938
Output $ / M tokens$0.15$0.25
Results tracked246

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
SciCode17.4%—
LMArena Coding1281—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard30.4%—

Reasoning Mistral Small 3.2 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313), Mistral Small 3.2: 18.1 (#287)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
Chess Puzzles0%1%
Epoch Capabilities Index123.5131.74
Kagi LLM Benchmark—40.4%
CritPt0%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1309—
DTBench48.8%—
LMCA4.5%—

Math Mistral Small 3.2 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.3 (#260)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202516.7%30.3%
LMArena Math1307—

Knowledge Too close to call

Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.7 (#256)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
GPQA Diamond39.5%49.1%
Vectara Hallucination Rate4.4%—
LMArena Expert1248—

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: —, Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
MindCube46.7%—

Multilingual Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
LMArena Non-English1318—
LMArena German1370—
LMArena Russian1335—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
LMArena Instruction Following1299—

Long Context Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162), Mistral Small 3.2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
LMArena Longer Query1317—

Writing & Preference Gemma 3 12B leads

Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209), Mistral Small 3.2: 45.0 (#224)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMistral Small 3.2
EQ-Bench Creative Writing11261255
LMArena Text1334—
LMArena Creative Writing1331—
LMArena Multi-Turn1334—

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemma 3 12B better than Mistral Small 3.2?

Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3.2 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 3.2?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3.2 lists at $0.0938 and $0.25.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Small 3.2 does, with 256K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Mistral Small 3.2 share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.2 has 6.

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