Compare / Phi-4-reasoning-plus vs Gemma 3 12B
Phi-4-reasoning-plus vs Gemma 3 12B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Phi-4-reasoning-plus scores higher on the Small LM Index: 54.4 vs 28.4. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Phi-4-reasoning-plus wins 3 and Gemma 3 12B wins 0. Gemma 3 12B is smaller: it needs about 9 GB of memory at 4-bit, against 11.4 GB for Phi-4-reasoning-plus. Only Gemma 3 12B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.060 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.
Pick Phi-4-reasoning-plus if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you need a permissive license (MIT)
Pick Gemma 3 12B if…
- you have limited memory (about 9 GB at 4-bit)
- you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
- you work with long documents
- you need image input
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Specifications
| Phi-4-reasoning-plus | Gemma 3 12B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 54.4 (likely 50–59) | 28.4 (likely 22–36) |
| Lab | Microsoft (Phi) · United States | Google · United States |
| Released | 2025-04-30 | 2025-03-12 |
| Parameters | 14.7B (dense) | 12.2B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~11.4 GB | ~9 GB |
| Context window | 32K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Input | text | text, image |
| Reasoning | Always thinks | No thinking |
| License | MIT | Gemma |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | $0.060 ($0.040 in, $0.12 out) |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 4.9K | 359.7K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Phi-4-reasoning-plus | Gemma 3 12B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 76.0 | 60.6 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 69.3 | 40.9 |
| AIME Math | 78.0 | ≈ 30 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 53.1 | 24.6 |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Phi-4-reasoning-plus or Gemma 3 12B?
Phi-4-reasoning-plus scores higher on the Small LM Index: 54.4 vs 28.4. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Phi-4-reasoning-plus wins 3 and Gemma 3 12B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Only Gemma 3 12B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.060 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Gemma 3 12B is smaller: it needs about 9 GB of memory at 4-bit, against 11.4 GB for Phi-4-reasoning-plus.
Which has the longer context window?
Gemma 3 12B has the longer context window: 128K tokens against 32K.
Can I use Phi-4-reasoning-plus and Gemma 3 12B commercially?
Phi-4-reasoning-plus is released under MIT and Gemma 3 12B under Gemma. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.