o3-mini vs Gemma 3 27B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

o3-mini is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 56 to 42. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3-mini's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 82.1 against 37.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 86.9 to 45.

o3-mini is the reasoning model in the pair, while Gemma 3 27B 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. o3-mini gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 32K for Gemma 3 27B.

Quick Verdict

Pick o3-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 3 27B only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Knowledge

o3-mini

o3-mini

82.1

Gemma 3 27B

37.3

86.9
MMLU
45
77.2
GPQA
44
-
SuperGPQA
42
-
OpenBookQA
40
-
MMLU-Pro
50
-
HLE
3

Coding

o3-mini

o3-mini

49.3

Gemma 3 27B

22.7

49.3
SWE-bench Verified
16
-
HumanEval
37
-
LiveCodeBench
15

Mathematics

o3-mini

o3-mini

87.3

Gemma 3 27B

45.5

87.3
AIME 2024
47
-
AIME 2023
45
-
AIME 2025
46
-
HMMT Feb 2023
41
-
HMMT Feb 2024
43
-
HMMT Feb 2025
42
-
BRUMO 2025
44
-
MATH-500
56

Reasoning

Gemma 3 27B
-
SimpleQA
43
-
MuSR
41
-
BBH
62

Instruction Following

o3-mini

o3-mini

93.9

Gemma 3 27B

67

93.9
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Gemma 3 27B
-
MGSM
64

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3-mini or Gemma 3 27B?

o3-mini is ahead overall, 56 to 42. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 86.9 and 45.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3-mini or Gemma 3 27B?

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 37.3. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3-mini or Gemma 3 27B?

o3-mini has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.3 versus 22.7. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3-mini or Gemma 3 27B?

o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 45.5. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o3-mini or Gemma 3 27B?

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

Weekly LLM Benchmark Digest

Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.

Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.