Google: Gemma 3 12B (free) alternatives
Ranked by capability overlap, similar context window, and similar price tier. Cross-vendor options are weighted higher than same-provider alternatives.
See also: Google: Gemma 3 12B (free) model details · Gemma family · Google provider page
Top 15 alternatives
| # | Model | Provider | Why | Context | Input price / 1M | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Qwen: Qwen2.5-VL 7B Instruct | Qwen | shares vision · similar price tier | 33K Short/standard context | $0.20 Budget | vs → |
| 2 | AllenAI: Molmo2 8B | Allenai | shares vision · similar price tier | 37K Short/standard context | $0.20 Budget | vs → |
| 3 | Baidu: ERNIE 4.5 VL 424B A47B | Baidu | shares vision · similar price tier | 123K Short/standard context | $0.42 Budget | vs → |
| 4 | Perceptron: Perceptron Mk1 | Perceptron | shares vision · similar price tier | 33K Short/standard context | $0.15 Budget | vs → |
| 5 | Anthropic: Claude 3 Haiku | Anthropic | shares vision · similar price tier | 200K Long context (128K+) | $0.25 Budget | vs → |
| 6 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp | DeepSeek | shares vision · similar price tier | 1.0M Ultra context (1M+) | $0.22 Budget | vs → |
| 7 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) | DeepSeek | shares vision · similar price tier | 1.0M Ultra context (1M+) | $0.11 Budget | vs → |
| 8 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | DeepSeek | shares vision · similar price tier | 1.0M Ultra context (1M+) | $0.15 Budget | vs → |
| 9 | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Qwen | shares vision · similar price tier | 262K Long context (128K+) | $0.20 Budget | vs → |
| 10 | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Qwen | shares vision · similar price tier | 262K Long context (128K+) | $0.12 Budget | vs → |
| 11 | Meta: Llama 3.2 11B Vision Instruct | Meta | shares vision · similar price tier | 131K Long context (128K+) | $0.05 Budget | vs → |
| 12 | Meta: Llama 4 Maverick | Meta | shares vision · similar price tier | 1.0M Ultra context (1M+) | $0.19 Budget | vs → |
| 13 | Meta: Llama 4 Scout | Meta | shares vision · similar price tier | 1.3M Ultra context (1M+) | $0.10 Budget | vs → |
| 14 | Meta: Llama Guard 4 12B | Meta | shares vision · similar price tier | 164K Long context (128K+) | $0.18 Budget | vs → |
| 15 | Mistral: Ministral 3 14B 2512 | Mistral AI | shares vision · similar price tier | 262K Long context (128K+) | $0.20 Budget | vs → |