# Codestral vs Gemma 3 12B

> Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 32.1 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-gemma-3-12b
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in coding, where Gemma 3 12B leads 31.7 to 27.3.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $0.90 for Codestral.
- Codestral accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Google |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 32.1 |
| Rank | 290 | 262 |
| Context | 256K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Codestral: 27.3 (#321)
- Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| SciCode | — | 17.4% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1281 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Codestral: —
- Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 30.4% |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.8 (#251)
- Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1309 |
| DTBench | — | 48.8% |
| LMCA | — | 4.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 123.5 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 16.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1307 |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 39.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.4% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1248 |

## Multimodal

- Codestral: —
- Gemma 3 12B: —

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | — | 46.7% |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1318 |
| LMArena German | — | 1370 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1335 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1299 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1317 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1334 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1331 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1126 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1334 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Gemma 3 12B?

Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 32.1 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral 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; Codestral lists at $0.30 and $0.90.

### Is Codestral or Gemma 3 12B better for coding?

Gemma 3 12B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 31.7 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Codestral does, with 256K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Gemma 3 12B share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 12B has 24.