# Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Gemma 3 27B

> Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 30.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 8.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

## Summary

- They share 27 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher in 10 categories and Gemma 3 27B in 0 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads 50.0 to 25.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 71.1% for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and 22.5% for Gemma 3 27B.
- Gemma 3 27B is cheaper at $0.08 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 131K.
- Gemma 3 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Google |
| Noometry Index | 41.8 | 30.5 |
| Rank | 113 | 277 |
| Context | 1.05M | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.08 |
| Output $/M | $2.50 | $0.16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.1 (#96)
- Gemma 3 27B: 22.1 (#329)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 41.3% | 21.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1455 | 1322 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 4.9% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1440 | — |
| WeirdML | 39% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 39.9% |
| ALE-Bench | 765.27 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 28.6 (#82)
- Gemma 3 27B: 24.9 (#105)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 29.5% |
| GDP.pdf | 10% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#95)
- Gemma 3 27B: 16.3 (#297)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 22% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1441 | 1340 |
| DTBench | 83.5% | 52.5% |
| LMCA | 37.6% | 12.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.12 | 130.04 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 10.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 40.4% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 60.4% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 53.5% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 43.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 19% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 51.5% |
| LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Math

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#245)
- Gemma 3 27B: 24.4 (#261)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | 22.5% |
| LMArena Math | 1431 | 1312 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 26% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | — |
| ProofBench | 13% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 55.4% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 74% |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.0 (#66)
- Gemma 3 27B: 25.4 (#256)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 83.3% | 47.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1430 | 1303 |
| Confabulations | — | 40.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 40.3 (#38)
- Gemma 3 27B: 32.0 (#94)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1266 | 1165 |
| GeoBench | — | 52% |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.8 (#59)
- Gemma 3 27B: 47.0 (#150)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1428 | 1334 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1467 | 1347 |
| LMArena French | 1452 | 1368 |
| LMArena German | 1454 | 1362 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | 1406 | 1308 |
| LMArena Russian | 1443 | 1349 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1440 | 1348 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 75.0 (#77)
- Gemma 3 27B: 70.8 (#155)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1420 | 1321 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 74.9% |

## Long Context

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.8 (#80)
- Gemma 3 27B: 27.6 (#288)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1435 | 1333 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 33.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.4 (#55)
- Gemma 3 27B: 52.7 (#161)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1436 | 1358 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1419 | 1346 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1559 | 1266 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1445 | 1344 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 79.9% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 34.6% |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better than Gemma 3 27B?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 30.5 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 8.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Gemma 3 27B?

Gemma 3 27B is cheaper. It lists at $0.08 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Gemma 3 27B better for coding?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.1 versus 22.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Gemma 3 27B share?

27 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 38 scored results on Noometry and Gemma 3 27B has 43.