# Gemma 3 12B vs Magistral Medium

> Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.2 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 37× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-3-12b-vs-magistral-medium
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 14

## Summary

- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 5 categories and Magistral Medium in 3 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Magistral Medium leads 35.1 to 22.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 17.4% for Gemma 3 12B and 39.2% for Magistral Medium.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.
- Magistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 35.2 |
| Rank | 262 | 227 |
| Context | 131K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $2 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $5 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)
- Magistral Medium: 39.1 (#161)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 17.4% | 39.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1319 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

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

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

## Reasoning

- Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)
- Magistral Medium: 8.6 (#348)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1267 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 16.2% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 6.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| DTBench | 48.8% | — |
| LMCA | 4.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | — |

## Math

- Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)
- Magistral Medium: 35.1 (#189)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1250 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)
- Magistral Medium: 33.5 (#202)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1223 |
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |

## Multimodal

- Gemma 3 12B: —
- Magistral Medium: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)
- Magistral Medium: 39.6 (#224)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1232 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1248 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1224 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1227 |
| LMArena French | — | 1267 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1175 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1125 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1271 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)
- Magistral Medium: 66.0 (#211)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1254 |

## Long Context

- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)
- Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#183)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1295 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)
- Magistral Medium: 46.3 (#219)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Magistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1255 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1245 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1275 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Gemma 3 12B better than Magistral Medium?

Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.2 to 32.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 37× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Magistral Medium?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.

### Is Gemma 3 12B or Magistral Medium better for coding?

Magistral Medium scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.1 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Magistral Medium does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

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

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Magistral Medium has 22.