# Gemma 3 12B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

> Gemma 3 12B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 31.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemma-3-12b-vs-qwen2-5-72b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 6 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 3 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads 22.3 to 15.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is DTBench: 48.8% for Gemma 3 12B and 62.9% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
- Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.40 / $5.60 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.

## Snapshot

| | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 32.1 | 31.9 |
| Rank | 262 | 267 |
| Context | 131K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $1.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $5.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Gemma 3 12B: 31.7 (#280)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1292 |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
| WeirdML | — | 16% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.8% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 55.9% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemma 3 12B: 25.5 (#108)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |
| TheAgentCompany | — | 5.7% |
| BALROG | — | 16.2% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 35.8% |

## Reasoning

- Gemma 3 12B: 15.7 (#313)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1271 |
| DTBench | 48.8% | 62.9% |
| LMCA | 4.5% | 13.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.5 | 129 |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.8% |
| ForecastBench | — | 57.5 |
| HellaSwag | — | 84.8% |
| PIQA | — | 82.6% |
| WinoGrande | — | 82.3% |

## Math

- Gemma 3 12B: 22.3 (#279)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | 8.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1283 |
| Omni-MATH | — | 33% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 63.2% |

## Knowledge

- Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#257)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | 49.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1245 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 63.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 19.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 42.6% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 94.5% |
| MMLU | — | 85.3% |
| TriviaQA | — | 71.9% |

## Multimodal

- Gemma 3 12B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| MindCube | 46.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemma 3 12B: 45.7 (#165)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1252 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 1234 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 1264 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1272 |
| LMArena French | — | 1280 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1180 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1256 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemma 3 12B: 68.6 (#186)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1254 |
| IFEval | — | 80.6% |

## Long Context

- Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#162)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 1282 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemma 3 12B: 47.5 (#209)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1269 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1221 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1272 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |
| WildBench | — | 80.2% |

## FAQ

### Is Gemma 3 12B better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Gemma 3 12B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.1 vs 31.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct lists at $1.40 and $5.60.

### Is Gemma 3 12B or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.2 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 Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.