Model comparison
Gemma 3 12B vs o4-mini
o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 26× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.
GoogleSummary
- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 0 categories and o4-mini in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where o4-mini leads 40.8 to 22.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 81.7% for o4-mini.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
- o4-mini accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 41.6 |
| Released | 2025-03-12 | 2025-04-16 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | 200K |
| Max output | 8K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $1.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $4.40 |
| Results tracked | 24 | 60 |
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Category by category
Coding o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280), o4-mini: 40.9 (#127)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1368 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 45% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 72% |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| GSO | — | 3.6% |
| WeirdML | — | 52.6% |
| CadEval | — | 62% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 826.17 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.72 |
Agentic & Tool Use o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108), o4-mini: 32.6 (#61)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | 53.2% |
| GDPval | — | 25.3% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 63.9% |
Reasoning o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313), o4-mini: 24.6 (#162)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0.6% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 26% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1351 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 77.6% |
| LMCA | 4.5% | 26.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | 145.64 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 6.1% |
| SimpleBench | — | 38.7% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 67.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 58.7% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 9.2% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| ForecastBench | — | 61.8 |
Math o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279), o4-mini: 40.8 (#89)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 81.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1389 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 36.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 4.9% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 72% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 24.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 6.3% |
Knowledge o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257), o4-mini: 43.6 (#91)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 79.6% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | 18.6% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1343 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 18.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 19.6% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 82% |
| Confabulations | — | 15.8% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 73.5% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: —, o4-mini: 40.2 (#49)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1194 |
| GeoBench | — | 64% |
| VPCT | — | 57.5% |
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |
Multilingual o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165), o4-mini: 47.0 (#154)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1336 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1334 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1354 |
| LMArena French | — | 1364 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1308 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1312 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1347 |
Instruction Following o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186), o4-mini: 75.2 (#68)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1321 |
| IFEval | — | 92.8% |
Long Context o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162), o4-mini: 45.5 (#33)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1315 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 77.8% |
Writing & Preference o4-mini leads
Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209), o4-mini: 54.0 (#152)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1353 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1294 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1350 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |
| WildBench | — | 85.4% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemma 3 12B better than o4-mini?
o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 26× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or o4-mini?
Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.
Is Gemma 3 12B or o4-mini better for coding?
o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
o4-mini does, with 200K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and o4-mini share?
21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.