Model comparison
Codestral vs Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.5 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 1.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 1 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
GoogleSummary
- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 0 categories and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads 42.4 to 27.3.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 256K.
Side by side
| Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 41.5 |
| Released | 2024-05-29 | 2026-07-21 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 256K | 1.05M |
| Max output | 8K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.90 | $2.50 |
| Results tracked | 7 | 39 |
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Category by category
Coding Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads
Codestral: 27.3 (#321), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.4 (#104)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | 765.27 |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1440 |
| SciCode | — | 41.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 39% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1453 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Codestral: —, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#107)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | — | 29.3% |
| GDP.pdf | — | 10% |
Reasoning Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads
Codestral: 19.8 (#251), Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#114)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 10.3% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.4% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 53.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 22% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1441 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| DTBench | — | 83.5% |
| LMCA | — | 37.6% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 145.13 |
Math Not comparable
Codestral: —, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.9 (#264)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 26% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 71.1% |
| ProofBench | — | 13% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1433 |
Knowledge Not comparable
Codestral: —, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 83.3% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1435 |
Multimodal Not comparable
Codestral: —, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 41.1 (#40)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1268 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Codestral: —, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.5 (#63)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1427 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1469 |
| LMArena French | — | 1451 |
| LMArena German | — | 1454 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1427 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1407 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1443 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1442 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Codestral: —, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 74.8 (#85)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1420 |
Long Context Not comparable
Codestral: —, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.9 (#84)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1435 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Codestral: —, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.2 (#57)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1435 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1420 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1559 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1445 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Codestral better than Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite?
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.5 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 1.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Codestral or Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite?
Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.
Is Codestral or Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better for coding?
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 256K.
How many benchmarks do Codestral and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite share?
1 benchmark has published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 39.