# Gemma 3 12B vs GPT-4o mini

> Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.8 to 25.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-3-12b-vs-gpt-4o-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 8 categories and GPT-4o mini in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Gemma 3 12B leads 21.0 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 6.9% for GPT-4o mini.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for GPT-4o mini.
- Gemma 3 12B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
- Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 31.8 | 25.4 |
| Rank | 255 | 337 |
| Context | 131K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $0.60 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276)
- GPT-4o mini: 21.6 (#330)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1290 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 3.6% |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| WeirdML | — | 11.8% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 46.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 43.1% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 57.4% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 83.5% |
| MBPP+ | — | 72.2% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101)
- GPT-4o mini: 27.2 (#95)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |
| BALROG | — | 17.4% |

## Reasoning

- Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307)
- GPT-4o mini: 8.7 (#343)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1267 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 54.4% |
| LMCA | 4.5% | 10.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.49 | 126.56 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0% |
| SimpleBench | — | 10.7% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 28.8% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 32.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 12% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 50% |
| LiveBench | — | 41.3% |
| PIQA | — | 88.7% |

## Math

- Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273)
- GPT-4o mini: 9.9 (#307)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 6.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1267 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 0.7% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 28% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 36.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 52.6% |
| GSM8K | — | 91.3% |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250)
- GPT-4o mini: 17.7 (#279)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 37.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1235 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 8.3% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 60.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 37.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 36.8% |
| BoolQ | — | 88.7% |
| MMLU | — | 81.8% |

## Multimodal

- Gemma 3 12B: —
- GPT-4o mini: 25.3 (#117)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1066 |
| Video-MME | — | 64.8% |
| GeoBench | — | 64% |
| VPCT | — | 34% |
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160)
- GPT-4o mini: 42.2 (#194)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1266 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1272 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1275 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1264 |
| LMArena French | — | 1296 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1216 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1195 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1276 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179)
- GPT-4o mini: 62.1 (#234)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1259 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 56.8% |
| IFEval | — | 78.2% |

## Long Context

- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157)
- GPT-4o mini: 39.1 (#181)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1289 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205)
- GPT-4o mini: 39.7 (#243)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | GPT-4o mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1286 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1268 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | 873 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1285 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 67.2% |
| WildBench | — | 79.1% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 28.6% |

## FAQ

### Is Gemma 3 12B better than GPT-4o mini?

Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.8 to 25.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or GPT-4o mini?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; GPT-4o mini lists at $0.15 and $0.60.

### Is Gemma 3 12B or GPT-4o mini better for coding?

Gemma 3 12B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 31.2 versus 21.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemma 3 12B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and GPT-4o mini share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and GPT-4o mini has 60.