Gemma 4 12B vs GPT-5.6
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Gemma 4 12B is meaningfully stronger at cost efficiency (92 vs 70 on our capability index).
- •GPT-5.6 is meaningfully stronger at math (92 vs 65).
- •Gemma 4 12B is open-weights (free to self-host); GPT-5.6 is paid API only.
Specs comparison
| Gemma 4 12B | GPT-5.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | |
| Type | Open source | Closed source |
| Context window | ✓256K tokens | Not announced |
| Input / 1M tokens | ✓Free (self-host) | 5 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Free (self-host) | 30 |
| Release date | 2026-06 | 2026-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Gemma 4 12B | GPT-5.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Total parameters | ~11.95B | - |
| Context window | 256K tokens | - |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Sol) | - | 88.8% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Terra) | - | 82.5% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Luna) | - | 84.3% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | - | 88.8 |
| ExploitBench | - | Competitive with Anthropic Mythos Preview |
| ExploitGym | - | Significant improvements |
| GeneBench v1 | - | Not announced |
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 if...
- →You want to standardize on one model generation but route requests across cost/quality tiers
- →You are an approved preview partner exploring the newest OpenAI capabilities
- →Workloads spanning agentic coding, knowledge work, and research where tier flexibility helps