# Gemma 3 12B vs gpt-oss-120b

> gpt-oss-120b is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-3-12b-vs-gpt-oss-120b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 22

## Summary

- They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 3 categories and gpt-oss-120b in 6 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where gpt-oss-120b leads 52.5 to 22.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.7% for Gemma 3 12B and 88.9% for gpt-oss-120b.
- gpt-oss-120b is cheaper at $0.037 / $0.17 per million input/output tokens, against $0.05 / $0.15 for Gemma 3 12B.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 36.3 |
| Rank | 262 | 217 |
| Context | 131K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.037 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $0.17 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)
- gpt-oss-120b: 33.5 (#256)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 17.4% | 36% |
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1380 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 26% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 41.8% |
| WeirdML | — | 48.2% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 575.62 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.41 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)
- gpt-oss-120b: 12.2 (#153)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 18.7% |
| APEX-Agents | — | 4.4% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 56.6% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | -21.53 |

## Reasoning

- Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)
- gpt-oss-120b: 20.0 (#245)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 1.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 20% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1364 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 76.3% |
| LMCA | 4.5% | 22.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | 139.93 |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 58.6% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 2% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 25% |

## Math

- Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)
- gpt-oss-120b: 52.5 (#50)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 88.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1389 |
| Omni-MATH | — | 68.8% |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)
- gpt-oss-120b: 42.4 (#96)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 75.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | 14.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1356 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 79.5% |
| Confabulations | — | 15.7% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 68.4% |

## Multimodal

- Gemma 3 12B: —
- gpt-oss-120b: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)
- gpt-oss-120b: 48.0 (#147)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1351 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1353 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1343 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1385 |
| LMArena French | — | 1369 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1331 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1282 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1389 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)
- gpt-oss-120b: 69.3 (#173)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1318 |
| IFEval | — | 83.6% |

## Long Context

- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)
- gpt-oss-120b: 31.4 (#278)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1319 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 44.4% |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)
- gpt-oss-120b: 46.5 (#217)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | gpt-oss-120b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1365 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1275 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | 961 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1340 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 77.1% |
| WildBench | — | 84.5% |

## FAQ

### Is Gemma 3 12B better than gpt-oss-120b?

gpt-oss-120b is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or gpt-oss-120b?

gpt-oss-120b is cheaper. It lists at $0.037 per million input tokens and $0.17 per million output tokens; Gemma 3 12B lists at $0.05 and $0.15.

### Is Gemma 3 12B or gpt-oss-120b better for coding?

gpt-oss-120b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 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 gpt-oss-120b share?

22 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and gpt-oss-120b has 48.