Noometry

Model comparison

Gemma 3 12B vs Mercury 2

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 5.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.

Gemma 3 12B Google

31.8

Rank #255 Confirmed

Mercury 2 Inception

38.8

Rank #167 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 12B scores higher in 0 categories and Mercury 2 in 7 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mercury 2 leads 35.6 to 26.5.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 17.4% for Gemma 3 12B and 38.7% for Mercury 2.
  • Gemma 3 12B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
  • Gemma 3 12B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
  • Gemma 3 12B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Gemma 3 12BMercury 2
ProviderGoogleInception
Noometry Index31.838.8
Released2025-03-122026-02-20
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window131K128K
Max output8K50K
Input $ / M tokens$0.05$0.25
Output $ / M tokens$0.15$0.75
Results tracked2417

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Category by category

Coding Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 31.2 (#276), Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
SciCode17.4%38.7%
LMArena Coding12811391
LMArena WebDev—1170
WeirdML—43.2%
ALE-Bench—785.58

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 25.3 (#101), Mercury 2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard30.4%—

Reasoning Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 15.2 (#307), Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
CritPt0%0.8%
LMArena Hard Prompts13091362
Chess Puzzles0%—
DTBench48.8%—
LMCA4.5%—
Epoch Capabilities Index123.49—

Math Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: 21.0 (#273), Mercury 2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202516.7%—
LMArena Math1307—

Knowledge Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 26.5 (#250), Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
Vectara Hallucination Rate4.4%12.3%
LMArena Expert12481358
GPQA Diamond39.5%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemma 3 12B: —, Mercury 2: —

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
MindCube46.7%—

Multilingual Too close to call

Gemma 3 12B: 45.9 (#160), Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
LMArena Non-English13181331
LMArena Russian13351303
LMArena Chinese—1416
LMArena German1370—

Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 68.8 (#179), Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
LMArena Instruction Following12991328

Long Context Too close to call

Gemma 3 12B: 40.0 (#157), Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
LMArena Longer Query13171329

Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 12B: 47.7 (#205), Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)

BenchmarkGemma 3 12BMercury 2
LMArena Text13341355
LMArena Creative Writing13311289
LMArena Multi-Turn13341358
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1126—

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemma 3 12B better than Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 31.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 12B costs 5.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 12B or Mercury 2?

Gemma 3 12B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

Is Gemma 3 12B or Mercury 2 better for coding?

Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.2 versus 31.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemma 3 12B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 12B and Mercury 2 share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 12B has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.

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