# Gemma 3 12B vs Mistral 7B

> Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.8 to 22.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-3-12b-vs-mistral-7b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral 7B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multilingual, where Gemma 3 12B leads 45.9 to 26.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 39.5% for Gemma 3 12B and 15.2% for Mistral 7B.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.25 for Mistral 7B.
- Gemma 3 12B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 8K.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 31.8 | 22.9 |
| Rank | 255 | 346 |
| Context | 131K | 8K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.25 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $0.25 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276)
- Mistral 7B: 25.9 (#321)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1082 |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 19.5% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 27.3% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 36% |
| MBPP+ | — | 42.1% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101)
- Mistral 7B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307)
- Mistral 7B: 12.6 (#331)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1067 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 42.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.49 | 111.97 |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LMCA | 4.5% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 47.1% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 56.1% |
| HellaSwag | — | 81% |
| PIQA | — | 83% |
| WinoGrande | — | 75.3% |

## Math

- Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273)
- Mistral 7B: 7.6 (#319)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 0.3% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1085 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 3.7% |
| GSM8K | — | 54.4% |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250)
- Mistral 7B: 7.3 (#306)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 15.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1036 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 78.6% |
| BoolQ | — | 87.4% |
| MMLU | — | 62.5% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 79.8% |
| TriviaQA | — | 75.2% |

## Multimodal

- Gemma 3 12B: —
- Mistral 7B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160)
- Mistral 7B: 26.0 (#278)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1012 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 987 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1018 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1009 |
| LMArena French | — | 1036 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 878 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1026 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179)
- Mistral 7B: 54.5 (#275)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1060 |

## Long Context

- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157)
- Mistral 7B: 32.2 (#266)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1060 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205)
- Mistral 7B: 30.9 (#281)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1090 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1068 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1062 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Gemma 3 12B better than Mistral 7B?

Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.8 to 22.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Mistral 7B?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mistral 7B lists at $0.25 and $0.25.

### Is Gemma 3 12B or Mistral 7B better for coding?

Gemma 3 12B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 31.2 versus 25.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemma 3 12B does, with 131K tokens against 8K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Mistral 7B share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mistral 7B has 37.