# Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs o3-mini

> Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.5 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite-vs-o3-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 31

## Summary

- They share 31 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher in 6 categories and o3-mini in 3 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads 64.2 to 50.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-1: 53.5% for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and 34.5% for o3-mini.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 200K.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 41.5 | 36.7 |
| Rank | 133 | 212 |
| Context | 1.05M | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $1.10 |
| Output $/M | $2.50 | $4.40 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.4 (#104)
- o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 41.3% | 39.8% |
| WeirdML | 39% | 43.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1453 | 1378 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1440 | — |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| CadEval | — | 54% |
| ALE-Bench | 765.27 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#107)
- o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 29.3% | — |
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |
| GDP.pdf | 10% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#114)
- o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 10.3% | 3% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 53.5% | 34.5% |
| CritPt | 0% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 22% | 17% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1441 | 1366 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 19% | 7% |
| DTBench | 83.5% | 68.8% |
| LMCA | 37.6% | 19% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.13 | 140.34 |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 60.4% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |

## Math

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.9 (#264)
- o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 26% | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | 76.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1433 | 1396 |
| ProofBench | 13% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.1 (#72)
- o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 83.3% | 77% |
| LMArena Expert | 1435 | 1364 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 41.1 (#40)
- o3-mini: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1268 | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.5 (#63)
- o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1427 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1469 | 1379 |
| LMArena French | 1451 | 1334 |
| LMArena German | 1454 | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1427 | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | 1407 | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | 1443 | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1442 | 1321 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 74.8 (#85)
- o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1420 | 1337 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |

## Long Context

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.9 (#84)
- o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1435 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.2 (#57)
- o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1435 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1420 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1445 | 1320 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1559 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better than o3-mini?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.5 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or o3-mini?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or o3-mini better for coding?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 40.8 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-mini share?

31 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 39 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.