# Gemma 3 12B vs GLM-4.5-Air

> GLM-4.5-Air is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 5.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GLM-4.5-Air's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-3-12b-vs-glm-4-5-air
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 13

## Summary

- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 0 categories and GLM-4.5-Air in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where GLM-4.5-Air leads 36.2 to 22.3.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.20 / $1.10 for GLM-4.5-Air.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Z.ai (Zhipu) |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 38.9 |
| Rank | 262 | 177 |
| Context | 131K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.20 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $1.10 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)
- GLM-4.5-Air: 33.3 (#259)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1397 |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| GSO | — | 2.9% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)
- GLM-4.5-Air: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)
- GLM-4.5-Air: 24.1 (#166)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1379 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 43% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| DTBench | 48.8% | — |
| LMCA | 4.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | — |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.2 |

## Math

- Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)
- GLM-4.5-Air: 36.2 (#170)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1396 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 39.1% |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)
- GLM-4.5-Air: 35.0 (#191)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | 9.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1370 |
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 8.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 76.2% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 59.4% |

## Multimodal

- Gemma 3 12B: —
- GLM-4.5-Air: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)
- GLM-4.5-Air: 49.1 (#135)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1366 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1377 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1373 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1426 |
| LMArena French | — | 1399 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1348 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1308 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1386 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)
- GLM-4.5-Air: 69.6 (#171)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1354 |
| IFEval | — | 81.2% |

## Long Context

- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)
- GLM-4.5-Air: 41.6 (#135)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1366 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)
- GLM-4.5-Air: 55.9 (#139)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GLM-4.5-Air |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1343 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1371 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |
| WildBench | — | 78.9% |

## FAQ

### Is Gemma 3 12B better than GLM-4.5-Air?

GLM-4.5-Air is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 5.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GLM-4.5-Air's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or GLM-4.5-Air?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; GLM-4.5-Air lists at $0.20 and $1.10.

### Is Gemma 3 12B or GLM-4.5-Air better for coding?

GLM-4.5-Air scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.3 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 131K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and GLM-4.5-Air share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and GLM-4.5-Air has 27.