# Gemma 3 12B vs Mixtral 8x7B

> Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 32.1 to 27.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-3-12b-vs-mixtral-8x7b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 6 categories and Mixtral 8x7B in 2 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where Gemma 3 12B leads 68.6 to 51.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 39.5% for Gemma 3 12B and 30.6% for Mixtral 8x7B.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.70 / $0.70 for Mixtral 8x7B.
- Gemma 3 12B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 32K.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 27.1 |
| Rank | 262 | 334 |
| Context | 131K | 32K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.70 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $0.70 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)
- Mixtral 8x7B: 32.8 (#269)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1126 |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 39.6% |
| MBPP+ | — | 49.7% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)
- Mixtral 8x7B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)
- Mixtral 8x7B: 18.2 (#285)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1115 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 49.6% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | 118.47 |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMCA | 4.5% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 55.2% |
| ForecastBench | — | 56.3 |
| HellaSwag | — | 86.7% |
| PIQA | — | 83.6% |
| WinoGrande | — | 77.2% |

## Math

- Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)
- Mixtral 8x7B: 18.8 (#289)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1147 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 10.5% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 10% |
| GSM8K | — | 74.4% |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)
- Mixtral 8x7B: 11.0 (#301)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 30.6% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1088 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 33.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 29.6% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 87.3% |
| MMLU | — | 70.6% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 85.8% |
| TriviaQA | — | 82.2% |

## Multimodal

- Gemma 3 12B: —
- Mixtral 8x7B: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)
- Mixtral 8x7B: 29.6 (#266)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1077 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1114 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1090 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1055 |
| LMArena French | — | 1166 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 931 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 968 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1111 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)
- Mixtral 8x7B: 51.0 (#297)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1109 |
| IFEval | — | 57.5% |

## Long Context

- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)
- Mixtral 8x7B: 33.4 (#260)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1103 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)
- Mixtral 8x7B: 34.2 (#270)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Mixtral 8x7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1132 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1109 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1115 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |
| WildBench | — | 67.3% |

## FAQ

### Is Gemma 3 12B better than Mixtral 8x7B?

Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 32.1 to 27.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Mixtral 8x7B?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mixtral 8x7B lists at $0.70 and $0.70.

### Is Gemma 3 12B or Mixtral 8x7B better for coding?

Mixtral 8x7B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 32.8 versus 31.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemma 3 12B does, with 131K tokens against 32K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Mixtral 8x7B share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mixtral 8x7B has 38.