Command R+ vs Gemma 4 12B
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Gemma 4 12B is meaningfully stronger at multimodal (78 vs 5).
- •Gemma 4 12B is open-weights (free to self-host); Command R+ is paid API only.
- •Gemma 4 12B has a 256K tokens context window vs 128K tokens - better for whole-repo or long-document work.
Specs comparison
| Command R+ | Gemma 4 12B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Cohere | |
| Type | Closed source | Open source |
| Context window | 128K tokens | ✓256K tokens |
| Input / 1M tokens | $2.50 | ✓Free (self-host) |
| Output / 1M tokens | $10.00 | Free (self-host) |
| Release date | 2024-08 | 2026-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Command R+ | Gemma 4 12B |
|---|---|---|
| RAG (BEIR) | Top-5 | - |
| MMLU | ~75% | - |
| Total parameters | - | ~11.95B |
| Context window | - | 256K tokens |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts and independent benchmark aggregators.
Which should you choose?
Choose Command R+ if...
- →Your core use case is grounded RAG with citations
- →You need reliable multi-step tool/agent orchestration
- →You want an enterprise model available on Bedrock
- →You need multilingual responses across the 10 optimized languages
Choose Gemma 4 12B if...
- →You need an open, self-hostable multimodal model
- →Running on a single consumer GPU or a laptop
- →Data-privacy or on-prem requirements
- →You want a permissive license (Apache 2.0) for commercial use