# Amazon Nova Lite vs Gemma 3 12B

> Amazon Nova Lite and Gemma 3 12B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.9 vs 32.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/amazon-nova-lite-vs-gemma-3-12b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 13

## Summary

- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 3 categories and Gemma 3 12B in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where Gemma 3 12B leads 68.6 to 59.3.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.06 / $0.24 for Amazon Nova Lite.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Google |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 32.1 |
| Rank | 265 | 262 |
| Context | 300K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $0.24 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270)
- Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1281 |
| SciCode | — | 17.4% |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Amazon Nova Lite: —
- Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 30.4% |

## Reasoning

- Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260)
- Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1309 |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| DTBench | — | 48.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| LMCA | — | 4.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 123.5 |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |

## Math

- Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247)
- Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1227 | 1307 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 16.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259)
- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | 4.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1248 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 39.5% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | — |
| MMLU | 77% | — |

## Multimodal

- Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123)
- Gemma 3 12B: —

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |
| MindCube | — | 46.7% |

## Multilingual

- Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232)
- Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1318 |
| LMArena German | 1229 | 1370 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1335 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | — |
| LMArena French | 1237 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255)
- Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1299 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |
| IFEval | 77.6% | — |

## Long Context

- Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217)
- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1317 |

## Writing & Preference

- Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237)
- Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1334 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1331 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1334 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1126 |
| WildBench | 75% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Amazon Nova Lite better than Gemma 3 12B?

Amazon Nova Lite and Gemma 3 12B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.9 vs 32.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite or Gemma 3 12B?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Amazon Nova Lite lists at $0.06 and $0.24.

### Is Amazon Nova Lite or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (32.5 vs 31.7); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and Gemma 3 12B share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.