Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Gemma 4 12B
53
GLM-5
67
Verified leaderboard positions: Gemma 4 12B unranked · GLM-5 #22
Pick GLM-5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
Coding
+8.8 difference
Reasoning
+17.4 difference
Knowledge
+7.1 difference
Gemma 4 12B
GLM-5
N/A
$1 / $3.2
N/A
74 t/s
N/A
1.64s
256K
200K
Pick GLM-5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
GLM-5 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 67 to 53. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
GLM-5's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 60.8 against 43.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU-Pro, 77.2% to 85.7%. Gemma 4 12B does hit back in coding, 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 GLM-5 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. Gemma 4 12B gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for GLM-5.
GLM-5 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 67 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU-Pro, where the scores are 77.2% and 85.7%.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.8 versus 70.7. Inside this category, MMLU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 63.2. GLM-5 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
GLM-5 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 43.4. Gemma 4 12B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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