# DeepSeek-R1 vs Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite

> DeepSeek-R1 and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite score almost the same on the Noometry Index (42.0 vs 41.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/deepseek-r1-vs-gemini-3-5-flash-lite
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 27

## Summary

- They share 27 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-R1 scores higher in 4 categories and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite in 5 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where DeepSeek-R1 leads 42.0 to 25.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-1: 21.2% for DeepSeek-R1 and 53.5% for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $2.15 for DeepSeek-R1.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 164K.

## Snapshot

| | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Google |
| Noometry Index | 42.0 | 41.8 |
| Rank | 110 | 113 |
| Context | 164K | 1.05M |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $2.15 | $2.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- DeepSeek-R1: 45.9 (#63)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.1 (#96)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.7% | 41.3% |
| WeirdML | 41.6% | 39% |
| LMArena Coding | 1427 | 1455 |
| ALE-Bench | 804.12 | 765.27 |
| Aider Polyglot | 71.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1440 |
| LiveBench Coding | 66.7% | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.7 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- DeepSeek-R1: 30.4 (#68)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 28.6 (#82)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| DeepResearch Bench | 35.1% | — |
| BALROG | 34.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | — | 10% |
| METR Time Horizons | 53.8% | — |

## Reasoning

- DeepSeek-R1: 18.7 (#253)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#95)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 1.3% | 10.3% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 21.2% | 53.5% |
| CritPt | 1.1% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1415 | 1441 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.3 | 145.12 |
| SimpleBench | 40.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 69.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 22% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 83.2% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| DTBench | — | 83.5% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 69.8% | — |
| LMCA | — | 37.6% |
| ForecastBench | 60 | — |
| LiveBench | 71.6% | — |

## Math

- DeepSeek-R1: 42.0 (#70)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#245)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 66.4% | 71.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1401 | 1431 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 26% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| ProofBench | — | 13% |
| Omni-MATH | 42.4% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 80.7% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 96.6% | — |

## Knowledge

- DeepSeek-R1: 44.3 (#81)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.0 (#66)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | 83.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1394 | 1430 |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 12.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 11.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 66.6% | — |

## Multimodal

- DeepSeek-R1: —
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 40.3 (#38)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1266 |

## Multilingual

- DeepSeek-R1: 52.6 (#80)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.8 (#59)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1412 | 1428 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1443 | 1467 |
| LMArena French | 1415 | 1452 |
| LMArena German | 1405 | 1454 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1394 | 1428 |
| LMArena Korean | 1359 | 1406 |
| LMArena Russian | 1423 | 1443 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1410 | 1440 |

## Instruction Following

- DeepSeek-R1: 72.2 (#138)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 75.0 (#77)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1382 | 1420 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 80.5% | — |
| IFEval | 78.4% | — |

## Long Context

- DeepSeek-R1: 45.4 (#36)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.8 (#80)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1391 | 1435 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 75% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- DeepSeek-R1: 61.5 (#84)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.4 (#55)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1428 | 1436 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1406 | 1419 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1500 | 1559 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1404 | 1445 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 83% | — |
| WildBench | 82.8% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 48.5% | — |

## FAQ

### Is DeepSeek-R1 better than Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite?

DeepSeek-R1 and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite score almost the same on the Noometry Index (42.0 vs 41.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-R1 or Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; DeepSeek-R1 lists at $0.50 and $2.15.

### Is DeepSeek-R1 or Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better for coding?

DeepSeek-R1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 45.9 versus 42.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 164K.

### How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-R1 and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite share?

27 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-R1 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 38.