Model comparison
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs o3
o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 41.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite costs 4.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 32 shared benchmarks.
GoogleSummary
- They share 32 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher in 3 categories and o3 in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where o3 leads 50.2 to 25.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Chess Puzzles: 22% for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and 38% for o3.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $8 for o3.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 200K.
Side by side
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | |
| Noometry Index | 41.5 | 47.5 |
| Released | 2026-07-21 | 2025-04-16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1.05M | 200K |
| Max output | 66K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $2 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $2.50 | $8 |
| Results tracked | 39 | 63 |
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Category by category
Coding o3 leads
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.4 (#104), o3: 46.8 (#64)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 39% | 52.4% |
| LMArena Coding | 1453 | 1408 |
| ALE-Bench | 765.27 | 933.55 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 62.3% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 58.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 81.3% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1440 | — |
| SciCode | 41.3% | — |
| GSO | — | 8.8% |
| CadEval | — | 74% |
Agentic & Tool Use o3 leads
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#107), o3: 34.5 (#44)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 29.3% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 63% |
| GDPval | — | 30.8% |
| DeepResearch Bench | — | 45.2% |
| OSWorld | — | 23% |
| GDP.pdf | 10% | — |
| LMArena Search | — | 1144 |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 65.4% |
Reasoning o3 leads
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#114), o3: 32.0 (#78)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 10.3% | 6.5% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 53.5% | 60.8% |
| CritPt | 0% | 1.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | 22% | 38% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1441 | 1402 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 19% | 29% |
| DTBench | 83.5% | 84.8% |
| LMCA | 37.6% | 39.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.13 | 146.86 |
| SimpleBench | — | 53.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 67.6% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 60.4% | — |
| EnigmaEval | — | 13.1% |
| ForecastBench | — | 62.5 |
Math o3 leads
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.9 (#264), o3: 50.2 (#58)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 26% | 33.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | 84.4% |
| LMArena Math | 1433 | 1426 |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | — |
| ProofBench | 13% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 71.4% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 18.7% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 2.1% |
Knowledge o3 leads
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.1 (#72), o3: 54.6 (#52)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 83.3% | 81.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1435 | 1402 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 20.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 49.4% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 85.9% |
| Confabulations | — | 14.4% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 75.3% |
Multimodal Too close to call
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 41.1 (#40), o3: 41.4 (#36)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1268 | 1214 |
| GeoBench | — | 74% |
| VPCT | — | 52% |
Multilingual Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.5 (#63), o3: 51.7 (#105)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1427 | 1401 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1469 | 1437 |
| LMArena French | 1451 | 1430 |
| LMArena German | 1454 | 1420 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1427 | 1403 |
| LMArena Korean | 1407 | 1370 |
| LMArena Russian | 1443 | 1406 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1442 | 1395 |
Instruction Following Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 74.8 (#85), o3: 72.8 (#127)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1420 | 1368 |
| IFEval | — | 86.9% |
Long Context o3 leads
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.9 (#84), o3: 53.3 (#6)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1435 | 1372 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 88.9% |
| CL-bench | — | 17.8% |
Writing & Preference Too close to call
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.2 (#57), o3: 63.5 (#64)
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1435 | 1410 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1420 | 1359 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1559 | 1676 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1445 | 1405 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 83.9% |
| WildBench | — | 86.1% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better than o3?
o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 41.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite costs 4.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or o3?
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; o3 lists at $2 and $8.
Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or o3 better for coding?
o3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.8 versus 42.4 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and o3 share?
32 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 39 scored results on Noometry and o3 has 63.