Head-to-head comparison across 2benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Gemini 3 Pro
81
Gemma 4 12B
53
Pick Gemini 3 Pro if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
Reasoning
+12.3 difference
Multimodal
+12.0 difference
Gemini 3 Pro
Gemma 4 12B
$2 / $12
N/A
109 t/s
N/A
32.65s
N/A
2M
256K
Pick Gemini 3 Pro if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
Gemini 3 Pro is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 81 to 53. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Gemini 3 Pro's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 81.1 against 69.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 81% to 69.1%. Gemma 4 12B does hit back in reasoning, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Gemma 4 12B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Gemini 3 Pro is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Gemini 3 Pro gives you the larger context window at 2M, compared with 256K for Gemma 4 12B.
Gemini 3 Pro is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 81 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 81% and 69.1%.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 43.4 versus 31.1. Gemini 3 Pro stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Gemini 3 Pro has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.1 versus 69.1. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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