Analysis Summary
Gemma 3 12B is Google's paid API variant with text and image input, a 131K context window, and listed tool and function-calling support. At $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens, it is positioned for economical automation. The supplied intelligence and coding measurements are limited, so the model is not intended for demanding reasoning or software engineering.
It can support image-aware classification, document extraction, SEO metadata, routine rewriting, and simple structured API workflows. The large context window helps with longer documents, but low measured agentic capability means autonomous execution should remain constrained and supervised. Choose it for inexpensive multimodal volume traffic and basic tool-connected tasks. Use a more capable model for complex content strategy, coding agents, and high-consequence decisions.
Assessed September 7, 2026
Editorial notes
Gemma 3 12B provides vision, a 131K context window, and tool and function calling at very low cost. Its measured reasoning and coding capability is limited, so it is best for simple multimodal workflows with human review.
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DFO Verdict
Gemma 3 12B provides vision, a 131K context window, and tool and function calling at very low cost. Its measured reasoning and coding capability is limited, so it is best for simple multimodal workflows with human review.
How Google: Gemma 3 12B compares
Google: Gemma 3 12B ranks #355 of 435 AI models we track for overall intelligence, #195 of 208 for coding, #189 of 190 for agentic tasks. Its 131K-token context window is larger than 48% of the models we list. At $0.05 per million input tokens it is cheaper than 76% of comparable models.
Dark bar = input · light bar = output, scaled to the priciest peer.
1M tokens ≈ 8 full-length novels or ~2,500 pages of business documents in a single request.
Strongest on value. The pulled-in intelligence corner is the trade-off, and if the shape matters more than the price, this is your model.
Compare shapes side-by-side →Pricing
| Token Type | Cost per 1M tokens | Cost per 1K tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.05 | $0.000050 |
| Output | $0.15 | $0.000150 |
What would Google: Gemma 3 12B cost your business?
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A website chatbot handling around 100 customer conversations a day, a few short messages each.
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Talk to our teamAbout Google: Gemma 3 12B
Gemma 3 introduces multimodality, supporting vision-language input and text outputs. It handles context windows up to 128k tokens, understands over 140 languages, and offers improved math, reasoning, and chat capabilities,..
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Frequently asked questions about Google: Gemma 3 12B
How much does Google: Gemma 3 12B cost?
Google: Gemma 3 12B costs $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens.
What is the context window of Google: Gemma 3 12B?
Google: Gemma 3 12B has a context window of 131,072 tokens (131K).
Is Google: Gemma 3 12B good for coding?
On our coding benchmark index, Google: Gemma 3 12B ranks #195 of 208 models, placing it in the broader range of the field for code generation and debugging.
What can Google: Gemma 3 12B do?
Google: Gemma 3 12B supports image/vision input, tool use, and function calling.
Who created Google: Gemma 3 12B?
Google: Gemma 3 12B is developed by Google and was released on March 13, 2025.
Data sourced from the OpenRouter API, Artificial Analysis, the Hugging Face Open LLM Leaderboard and our own internal testing. Scores are editorially curated by our team.
Last updated: September 7, 2026 8:38 pm