# Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite vs MiniMax-M3

> MiniMax-M3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 40.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 30

## Summary

- They share 30 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite scores higher in 2 categories and MiniMax-M3 in 8 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where MiniMax-M3 leads 58.4 to 41.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 8.2% for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and 65.1% for MiniMax-M3.
- MiniMax-M3 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 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 1M.
- MiniMax-M3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 40.4 | 43.5 |
| Rank | 141 | 81 |
| Context | 1.05M | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 37.5 (#179)
- MiniMax-M3: 41.5 (#111)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1256 | 1482 |
| SciCode | 41.9% | 47.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1400 | 1470 |
| ALE-Bench | 797.73 | 640.02 |
| FrontierCode | — | 14.7% |
| WeirdML | 52.2% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 29.9 (#72)
- MiniMax-M3: 22.5 (#121)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | — | 37.7% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | — | 4.6% |
| DeepResearch Bench | 37.3% | — |
| GBAEval | — | 0.9% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 2,158 |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 22.3 (#181)
- MiniMax-M3: 29.3 (#83)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | 8.2% | 65.1% |
| CritPt | 1.1% | 3.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | 25% | 14% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1407 | 1447 |
| DTBench | 76.8% | 78.9% |
| LMCA | 35% | 33.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 144.45 | 147 |
| ForecastBench | 54.4 | 61.4 |
| SimpleBench | — | 45.8% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 67.2% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 3% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 63.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 8% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 55% |

## Math

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 39.5 (#82)
- MiniMax-M3: 39.1 (#83)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 80% | 71.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1427 | 1432 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 27.7% | — |
| ProofBench | — | 18% |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 41.7 (#95)
- MiniMax-M3: 58.4 (#32)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 81.8% | 90.9% |
| LMArena Expert | 1397 | 1462 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 8.6% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 8.2% | — |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 38.7 (#57)
- MiniMax-M3: 39.5 (#45)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1240 | 1254 |
| LMArena Document | — | 1435 |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 52.5 (#82)
- MiniMax-M3: 53.2 (#70)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1410 | 1420 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1461 | 1465 |
| LMArena French | 1423 | 1445 |
| LMArena German | 1429 | 1424 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1411 | 1381 |
| LMArena Korean | 1393 | 1372 |
| LMArena Russian | 1420 | 1430 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1420 | 1431 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 72.9 (#126)
- MiniMax-M3: 75.7 (#56)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1376 | 1433 |

## Long Context

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 42.5 (#117)
- MiniMax-M3: 44.2 (#68)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1394 | 1445 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 61.0 (#90)
- MiniMax-M3: 62.3 (#79)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1416 | 1433 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1401 | 1405 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1417 | 1441 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | — | 1150 |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite better than MiniMax-M3?

MiniMax-M3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 40.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite or MiniMax-M3?

MiniMax-M3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite lists at $0.25 and $1.50.

### Is Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite or MiniMax-M3 better for coding?

MiniMax-M3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.5 versus 37.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and MiniMax-M3 share?

30 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite has 38 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M3 has 41.