Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Gemma 4 12B
53
Qwen3.5-27B
62
Verified leaderboard positions: Gemma 4 12B unranked · Qwen3.5-27B #21
Pick Qwen3.5-27B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority.
Coding
+9.0 difference
Reasoning
+17.2 difference
Knowledge
+2.8 difference
Gemma 4 12B
Qwen3.5-27B
N/A
$0 / $0
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
256K
262K
Pick Qwen3.5-27B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemma 4 12B only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority.
Qwen3.5-27B is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 62 to 53. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Qwen3.5-27B's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 60.6 against 43.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU-Pro, 77.2% to 86.1%. Gemma 4 12B does hit back in coding, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Qwen3.5-27B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 256K for Gemma 4 12B.
Qwen3.5-27B is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 62 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU-Pro, where the scores are 77.2% and 86.1%.
Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.6 versus 77.8. 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. Qwen3.5-27B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 60.6 versus 43.4. Gemma 4 12B stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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