Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Step 5 Preview
Gemini 3.5 Flash 
Step 5 Preview Verdict
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) and Step 5 Preview are level on quality (64.2 vs 65.0).
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, human preference, instruction following, knowledge, maths, multimodal.
- Step 5 Preview is stronger in composite, long context, reasoning.
- Step 5 Preview is 2.4× cheaper ($1.43 vs $3.38 per 1M blended).
| Metric | Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 64.2 | 65.0 |
| Agents & tools score | 67.9 | – |
| Coding score | 58.7 | – |
| Composite score | 71.6 | 84.4 |
| Human preference score | 67.4 | – |
| Instruction following score | 72.7 | – |
| Knowledge score | 74.1 | 72.0 |
| Long context score | 63.5 | 70.8 |
| Maths score | 67.2 | – |
| Multimodal score | 67.5 | 60.8 |
| Reasoning score | 64.2 | 82.1 |
| Blended price $/M | $3.38 | $1.43 |
| Output speed | 201 tok/s | – |
| Time to first answer | 13.9 s | – |
| Context window | 1.0M | 1M |
| LMArena Text | 1474 | – |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1493 | – |
| LMArena Coding | 1502 | – |
| LMArena WebDev | 1492 | – |
| LMArena Vision | 1307 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 33.6 | 43.6 |
| IFBench | 74.6% | – |
| AA-LCR | 74.3% | 88.3% |
| MMMU-Pro | 83.9% | 76.4% |
| AA-Omniscience | 20.8 | 16.4 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 39.4% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 92.1% | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 41.3% | 46.5% |
| SciCode (AA) | – | 58.9% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 95.6% | – |
| CritPt | 10.9% | 20.9% |
| GDPval (AA) | – | 53.6% |
| LMArena Maths | 1478 | – |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1466 | – |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1463 | – |
| LMArena Multi-turn | 1476 | – |
| LMArena Longer Queries | 1478 | – |
| LMArena Document | 1461 | – |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 58.1% | – |
| DeepSWE | 37.4% | – |
| GDP.pdf | 14.0% | – |
Data as of 2026-09-19. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Step 5 Preview: questions
- Is Gemini 3.5 Flash better than Step 5 Preview?
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (medium) and Step 5 Preview are level on quality (64.2 vs 65.0). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Step 5 Preview is ahead overall as of 2026-09-19, but check the category scores for your use.
- Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash or Step 5 Preview?
- Step 5 Preview is cheaper: $1.43 against $3.38 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Gemini 3.5 Flash accepts more context: 1.0M against 1M tokens.