Head-to-head comparison across 2benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Gemma 4 12B
53
GPT-4.1
57
Pick GPT-4.1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
Coding
+17.4 difference
Knowledge
+11.5 difference
Gemma 4 12B
GPT-4.1
N/A
$2 / $8
N/A
108 t/s
N/A
1.02s
256K
1M
Pick GPT-4.1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
GPT-4.1 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 57 to 53. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Gemma 4 12B is the reasoning model in the pair, while GPT-4.1 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. GPT-4.1 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 256K for Gemma 4 12B.
GPT-4.1 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 57 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 78.8% and 66.3%.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.8 versus 66.3. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Gemma 4 12B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 54.6. GPT-4.1 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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