Is Gemma 3 12B a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Gemma 3 12B on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
12 undominated of 145 · Oct 6, 2026
As of Oct 6, 2026, gpt-oss-120b scores higher and costs less than Gemma 3 12B for Balanced on LMArena, but it is not a drop-in. You would give up: image.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
gpt-oss-120b scores 31.2 points higher and costs 13% less, but you would give up: image.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1334.2
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.075/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1365.4
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.065/M
Gemma 3 12B takes text, image, returns up to 16,384 tokens from a 131,072-token context, and is listed by 1 seller.
Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: nothing dominates it outright, 1 more dominates it but gives something up. Gemma 3 12B scores 1334.2 at $0.075 per million tokens for this mix.
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| gpt-oss-120b | 1365.4 | $0.065/M | image |
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