Model comparison
Gemma 3 12B vs Llama 2-7B
Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.8 to 28.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.
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MetaSummary
- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 6 categories and Llama 2-7B in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multilingual, where Gemma 3 12B leads 45.9 to 23.9.
Side by side
| Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | |
| Noometry Index | 31.8 | 28.6 |
| Released | 2025-03-12 | 2023-07-18 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | — |
| Max output | 8K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | — |
| Results tracked | 24 | 29 |
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Category by category
Coding Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276), Llama 2-7B: 28.7 (#302)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1281 | 1002 |
| SciCode | 17.4% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101), Llama 2-7B: —
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 30.4% | — |
Reasoning Too close to call
Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307), Llama 2-7B: 15.1 (#309)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1309 | 1009 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 123.49 | 98.54 |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| DTBench | 48.8% | — |
| LMCA | 4.5% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 39.2% |
| HellaSwag | — | 77.2% |
| LAMBADA | — | 73.3% |
| PIQA | — | 78.8% |
| WinoGrande | — | 69.2% |
Math Llama 2-7B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273), Llama 2-7B: 28.2 (#231)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1307 | 1042 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 16.7% | — |
| GSM8K | — | 16.7% |
Knowledge Llama 2-7B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250), Llama 2-7B: 27.7 (#243)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1248 | 1036 |
| GPQA Diamond | 39.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.4% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 45.9% |
| BoolQ | — | 77.9% |
| MMLU | — | 45.8% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 58.6% |
| TriviaQA | — | 73.7% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemma 3 12B: —, Llama 2-7B: —
Multilingual Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160), Llama 2-7B: 23.9 (#288)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 973 |
| LMArena German | 1370 | 978 |
| LMArena Russian | 1335 | 995 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 973 |
| LMArena French | — | 969 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1007 |
Instruction Following Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179), Llama 2-7B: 51.0 (#293)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1299 | 1006 |
Long Context Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157), Llama 2-7B: 30.4 (#282)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1317 | 999 |
Writing & Preference Gemma 3 12B leads
Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205), Llama 2-7B: 28.1 (#293)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 12B | Llama 2-7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1334 | 1053 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1033 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1334 | 1029 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1126 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemma 3 12B better than Llama 2-7B?
Gemma 3 12B is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.8 to 28.6 on the Noometry Index.
Is Gemma 3 12B or Llama 2-7B better for coding?
Gemma 3 12B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 31.2 versus 28.7 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Llama 2-7B share?
14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Llama 2-7B has 29.