Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Gemini 3.6 Flash
Gemini 3.5 Flash Verdict
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) leads on quality: 64.1 vs 60.8.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, human preference, instruction following, reasoning.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is stronger in composite, knowledge, long context, multimodal, maths.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is 2.3× cheaper ($1.50 vs $3.38 per 1M blended).
| Metric | Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 64.1 | 60.8 |
| Agents & tools score | 68.0 | – |
| Coding score | 58.9 | 49.8 |
| Composite score | 71.5 | 72.4 |
| Human preference score | 67.8 | – |
| Instruction following score | 72.5 | – |
| Knowledge score | 74.0 | 74.7 |
| Long context score | 63.6 | 66.6 |
| Multimodal score | 67.6 | 67.8 |
| Reasoning score | 67.1 | – |
| Maths score | – | 54.8 |
| Blended price $/M | $3.38 | $1.50 |
| Output speed | 217 tok/s | 194 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 15.5 s | 16.8 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1.0M |
| FrontierCode | – | 34.4% |
| ProofBench | – | 36.0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | – | 154.3 |
| LMArena Text | 1476 | – |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1493 | – |
| LMArena Coding | 1503 | – |
| LMArena WebDev | 1491 | – |
| LMArena Vision | 1306 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 33.6 | 34.3 |
| IFBench | 74.6% | – |
| AA-LCR | 74.3% | 80.0% |
| MMMU-Pro | 83.9% | 83.2% |
| AA-Omniscience | 20.8 | 22.1 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 39.4% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 92.1% | 92.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 41.3% | 40.8% |
| SciCode (AA) | – | 53.4% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 95.6% | – |
| AIME 2026 | – | 96.7% |
| HMMT February 2026 | – | 89.4% |
| MathArena Apex | – | 26.0% |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Gemini 3.6 Flash: questions
- Is Gemini 3.5 Flash better than Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) leads on quality: 64.1 vs 60.8. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Gemini 3.5 Flash better than Gemini 3.6 Flash for coding?
- Gemini 3.5 Flash scores higher in coding (59 vs 50 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper: $1.50 against $3.38 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Gemini 3.5 Flash or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
- Gemini 3.5 Flash streams faster: 217 against 194 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1.0M against 1M tokens.