Gemma 4 12B vs GPT-5.6 Sol
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Gemma 4 12B is meaningfully stronger at cost efficiency (92 vs 55 on our capability index).
- •GPT-5.6 Sol is meaningfully stronger at math (95 vs 65).
- •Gemma 4 12B is open-weights (free to self-host); GPT-5.6 Sol is paid API only.
Specs comparison
| Gemma 4 12B | GPT-5.6 Sol | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | |
| Type | Open source | Closed source |
| Context window | ✓256K tokens | Not announced |
| Input / 1M tokens | ✓Free (self-host) | $5.00 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Free (self-host) | $30.00 |
| Release date | 2026-06 | 2026-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 12B | GPT-5.6 Sol |
|---|---|---|
| Total parameters | ~11.95B | - |
| Context window | 256K tokens | - |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | - | 88.8% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Ultra) | - | 91.9% |
| ExploitBench | - | competitive with Mythos Preview |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts and independent benchmark aggregators.
Which should you choose?
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
Choose GPT-5.6 Sol if...
- →You are an approved preview partner needing the most capable model for agentic software engineering
- →Complex multi-step tasks that benefit from subagent orchestration (Ultra) or maximum reasoning depth (max)
- →Frontier scientific research, professional knowledge work, or security-sensitive workloads