Noometry

Model comparison

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite vs Qwen3 8B

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Google

40.8

Rank #144 Confirmed

Qwen3 8B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.7

Rank #238 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3 8B in 1 category; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite leads 22.9 to 16.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is LMCA: 35% for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and 8.8% for Qwen3 8B.
  • Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $1.50 for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite.
  • Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Gemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
ProviderGoogleAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index40.833.7
Released2026-03-032025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M131K
Max output66K8K
Input $ / M tokens$0.25$0.18
Output $ / M tokens$1.50$0.70
Results tracked3811

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Category by category

Coding Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 37.8 (#188), Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
SciCode41.9%22.6%
LMArena WebDev1256—
WeirdML52.2%—
LMArena Coding1400—
ALE-Bench797.73—

Agentic & Tool Use Too close to call

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 30.2 (#79), Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—42.6%
DeepResearch Bench37.3%—

Reasoning Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 22.9 (#186), Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
CritPt1.1%0%
Chess Puzzles25%5%
DTBench76.8%59.7%
LMCA35%8.8%
Epoch Capabilities Index144.47136.17
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.2%—
NYT Connections (extended)8.2%—
EnigmaEval3%—
Thematic Generalization63.3%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1407—
ForecastBench54.4—

Math Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 40.7 (#90), Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202580%56.1%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)27.7%—
LMArena Math1428—

Knowledge Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 41.9 (#104), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
GPQA Diamond81.8%56.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate8.2%4.8%
Humanity's Last Exam8.6%—
LMArena Expert1398—

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 39.4 (#60), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
LMArena Vision1240—

Multilingual Not comparable

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 52.3 (#86), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
LMArena Non-English1411—
LMArena Chinese1461—
LMArena French1424—
LMArena German1429—
LMArena Japanese1413—
LMArena Korean1392—
LMArena Russian1420—
LMArena Spanish1421—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 72.7 (#131), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
LMArena Instruction Following1377—

Long Context Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite leads

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 42.5 (#122), Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
Fiction.LiveBench—62.1%
LMArena Longer Query1394—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 60.9 (#94), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkGemini 3.1 Flash LiteQwen3 8B
LMArena Text1416—
LMArena Creative Writing1401—
LMArena Multi-Turn1417—

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite better than Qwen3 8B?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite or Qwen3 8B?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite lists at $0.25 and $1.50.

Is Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.8 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and Qwen3 8B share?

9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite has 38 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.

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