# Gemma 2 9B vs StarCoder 2 3B

> Gemma 2 9B has enough public results to be ranked (#334); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-2-9b-vs-starcoder-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 2 9B scores higher in 0 categories and StarCoder 2 3B in 1 category; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where StarCoder 2 3B leads 32.9 to 29.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 40.6% for Gemma 2 9B and 21.4% for StarCoder 2 3B.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 25.7 | 35.8 |
| Rank | 334 | — |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Gemma 2 9B: 29.0 (#299)
- StarCoder 2 3B: 32.9

| Benchmark | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Complete | 40.6% | 21.4% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 34.7% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 22.5% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1174 | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 27.4% |

## Reasoning

- Gemma 2 9B: 15.3 (#306)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 119.78 | 88.01 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 15.2% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1172 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 36.4% | — |
| LiveBench | 28.7% | — |
| PIQA | 83.7% | — |
| WinoGrande | — | 57.1% |

## Math

- Gemma 2 9B: 9.3 (#312)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| GSM8K | 84.9% | 21.6% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 0.6% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 19.8% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1183 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 21% | — |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 2 9B: 9.7 (#300)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU | 72.1% | 36.6% |
| GPQA Diamond | 27.5% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1147 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 34.2% |
| BoolQ | 85.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 2 9B: 36.8 (#233)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1188 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1185 | — |
| LMArena French | 1189 | — |
| LMArena German | 1186 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1144 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1137 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1200 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1200 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 2 9B: 57.8 (#264)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 52.6% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1178 | — |

## Long Context

- Gemma 2 9B: 36.3 (#228)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1197 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 2 9B: 32.3 (#276)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 2 9B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1207 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1206 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 841 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1193 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 25.5% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Gemma 2 9B better than StarCoder 2 3B?

Gemma 2 9B has enough public results to be ranked (#334); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Gemma 2 9B or StarCoder 2 3B better for coding?

StarCoder 2 3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 32.9 versus 29.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Gemma 2 9B and StarCoder 2 3B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 2 9B has 35 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 3B has 7.