# Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite vs Step 3

> Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.8 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-vs-step-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite scores higher in 7 categories and Step 3 in 2 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite leads 60.9 to 54.3.
- Step 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 40.8 | 40.5 |
| Rank | 144 | 149 |
| Context | 1.05M | — |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | — |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 37.8 (#188)
- Step 3: 40.1 (#147)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1400 | 1367 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1256 | — |
| SciCode | 41.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 52.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 797.73 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 30.2 (#79)
- Step 3: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| DeepResearch Bench | 37.3% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 22.9 (#186)
- Step 3: 28.4 (#105)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 67.2% | 62.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1407 | 1355 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 8.2% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 25% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 3% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 63.3% | — |
| DTBench | 76.8% | — |
| LMCA | 35% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 144.47 | — |
| ForecastBench | 54.4 | — |

## Math

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 40.7 (#90)
- Step 3: 37.6 (#148)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1428 | 1366 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 27.7% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 80% | — |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 41.9 (#104)
- Step 3: 36.8 (#164)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1398 | 1333 |
| GPQA Diamond | 81.8% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 8.6% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 8.2% | — |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 39.4 (#60)
- Step 3: 35.5 (#86)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1240 | 1177 |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 52.3 (#86)
- Step 3: 46.3 (#159)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1411 | 1327 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1461 | 1397 |
| LMArena German | 1429 | 1371 |
| LMArena Korean | 1392 | 1269 |
| LMArena Russian | 1420 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1421 | 1371 |
| LMArena French | 1424 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1413 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 72.7 (#131)
- Step 3: 70.4 (#164)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1377 | 1332 |

## Long Context

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 42.5 (#122)
- Step 3: 40.3 (#157)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1394 | 1326 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 60.9 (#94)
- Step 3: 54.3 (#151)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1416 | 1350 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1401 | 1321 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1417 | 1341 |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite better than Step 3?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.8 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite or Step 3 better for coding?

Step 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 37.8 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and Step 3 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite has 38 scored results on Noometry and Step 3 has 17.