Gemma 3 12B Instruct Intelligence, Performance & Price Analysis
Model summary
Intelligence
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Speed
Output tokens per second
Input Price
USD per 1M tokens
Output Price
USD per 1M tokens
Verbosity
Output tokens from Intelligence Index
Metrics are compared against models of the same class:
- Non-reasoning models → compared only with other non-reasoning models
- Reasoning models → compared across both reasoning and non-reasoning
- Open weights models → compared only with other open weights models of the same size class:
- Tiny: ≤4B parameters
- Small: 4B–40B parameters
- Medium: 40B–150B parameters
- Large: >150B parameters
- Proprietary models → compared across proprietary and open weights models of the same price range, using a blended 3:1 input/output price ratio:
- <$0.15 per 1M tokens
- $0.15–$1 per 1M tokens
- >$1 per 1M tokens
| Reasoning | No This page shows the non-reasoning version of this model. A reasoning variant may also exist. |
|---|---|
| Input modality | Supports: text, image |
| Output modality | Supports: text |
| Context window | 128k ~192 A4 pages of size 12 Arial font |
| Total parameters | 12.2B |
| License | Gemma license |
| Model weights | Hugging Face |
Gemma 3 12B Instruct is among the least intelligent models, but well priced when comparing to other open weight non-reasoning models of similar size. It's also notably slow, however fairly concise. The model supports text and image input, outputs text, and has a 128k tokens context window.
Gemma 3 12B Instruct scores 9 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it at the lower end among comparable models (averaging 12). When evaluating the Intelligence Index, it generated 5.3M tokens, which is fairly concise in comparison to the average of 5.6M.
Pricing for Gemma 3 12B Instruct is $0.00 per 1M input tokens (competitively priced, average: $0.09) and $0.00 per 1M output tokens (competitively priced, average: $0.20). In total, it cost $0.00 to evaluate Gemma 3 12B Instruct on the Intelligence Index.
At 25 tokens per second, Gemma 3 12B Instruct is notably slow (96).
Intelligence
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index by Open Weights / Proprietary
Intelligence Evaluations
Openness
Artificial Analysis Openness Index: Results
Intelligence Index Comparisons
Intelligence vs. Price
Intelligence Index Token Use & Cost
Output Tokens Used to Run Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Cost to Run Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Context Window
Context Window
Pricing
Pricing: Input and Output Prices
Intelligence vs. Price (Log Scale)
Pricing Comparison of Gemma 3 12B Instruct API Providers
Speed
Measured by Output Speed (tokens per second)
Output Speed
Output Speed vs. Price
Latency
Measured by Time (seconds) to First Token
Latency: Time To First Answer Token
End-to-End Response Time
Seconds to output 500 Tokens, calculated based on time to first token, 'thinking' time for reasoning models, and output speed
End-to-End Response Time
Model Size (Open Weights Models Only)
Model Size: Total and Active Parameters
Comparisons to Gemma 3 12B
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gpt-oss-20B (high)- gpt-oss-120B (high)
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Claude Opus 4.6 (max)- Claude 4.5 Haiku
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Mistral Large 3
DeepSeek V3.2
Grok 4.20 Beta 0309
Nova 2.0 Pro Preview (medium)
MiniMax-M2.7
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super
Kimi K2.5
K-EXAONE
MiMo-V2-Pro- MiMo-V2-Flash (Feb 2026)
K2 Think V2
Mi:dm K 2.5 Pro
GLM-5
Qwen3.5 397B A17B
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Gemma 3 12B Instruct
Gemma 3 12B Instruct was released on March 12, 2025.
Gemma 3 12B Instruct was created by Google.
Gemma 3 12B Instruct scores 9 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it at the lower end among other open weight non-reasoning models of similar size (median: 12).
Gemma 3 12B Instruct generates output at 25.3 tokens per second (based on Google's API), which is at the lower end compared to other open weight non-reasoning models of similar size (median: 96.1 t/s).
Gemma 3 12B Instruct has a time to first token (TTFT) of 40.65s (based on Google's API), which is at the higher end compared to other open weight non-reasoning models of similar size (median: 1.32s).
When evaluated on the Intelligence Index, Gemma 3 12B Instruct generated 5.3M output tokens, which is better than average compared to other open weight non-reasoning models of similar size (median: 5.6M).
No, Gemma 3 12B Instruct is not a reasoning model. It provides direct responses without extended chain-of-thought reasoning.
Gemma 3 12B Instruct supports text and image input.
Gemma 3 12B Instruct supports text output.
Yes, Gemma 3 12B Instruct supports image input and can analyze, describe, and answer questions about images.
Yes, Gemma 3 12B Instruct is multimodal. It can process text and image input and generate text output.
Gemma 3 12B Instruct has a context window of 130k tokens. This determines how much text and conversation history the model can process in a single request.
Yes, Gemma 3 12B Instruct is open weights. The model weights are publicly available and can be downloaded for self-hosting.
Gemma 3 12B Instruct has 12.2 billion parameters.
Gemma 3 12B Instruct is released under the Gemma license license. This license allows commercial use. View license
Gemma 3 12B Instruct achieves a score of 9 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. This composite benchmark evaluates models across reasoning, knowledge, mathematics, and coding.
Yes, Gemma 3 12B Instruct is available via API through 5 providers. Compare API providers
Gemma 3 12B Instruct is available through 5 API providers. Compare providers