# Gemma 3 12B vs Mistral Medium

> Mistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.0 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-3-12b-vs-mistral-medium
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 20

## Summary

- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Medium in 8 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Medium leads 60.2 to 47.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is DTBench: 48.8% for Gemma 3 12B and 75.5% for Mistral Medium.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium.
- Mistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 31.8 | 36.0 |
| Rank | 255 | 211 |
| Context | 131K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276)
- Mistral Medium: 33.8 (#241)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 17.4% | 40.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1434 |
| FrontierCode | — | 8% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 763.98 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101)
- Mistral Medium: 28.1 (#84)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | 37.7% |

## Reasoning

- Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307)
- Mistral Medium: 23.3 (#165)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1426 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 75.5% |
| LMCA | 4.5% | 26.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 50% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 26.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.49 | — |

## Math

- Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273)
- Mistral Medium: 27.2 (#238)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 32.2% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1409 |
| ProofBench | — | 9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 81.6% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 0.3% |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250)
- Mistral Medium: 24.9 (#260)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 59.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | 22.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1408 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 4.5% |

## Multimodal

- Gemma 3 12B: —
- Mistral Medium: 34.6 (#82)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1172 |
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160)
- Mistral Medium: 52.3 (#86)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1408 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1433 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1411 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1448 |
| LMArena French | — | 1460 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1378 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1382 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1433 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179)
- Mistral Medium: 73.9 (#111)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1398 |

## Long Context

- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157)
- Mistral Medium: 42.9 (#108)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1406 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205)
- Mistral Medium: 60.2 (#97)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1424 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1391 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1418 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 77.3% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |

## FAQ

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

Mistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.0 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 40× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

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

Mistral Medium scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.8 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

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

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

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium has 36.