Gemini 3.6 Flash vs o3
Gemini 3.6 Flash 
o3 Verdict
- Gemini 3.6 Flash and o3 are level on quality (60.8 vs 61.6).
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is stronger in composite, knowledge, long context, multimodal.
- o3 is stronger in coding, maths, agents & tools, human preference, instruction following, reasoning.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is 2.3× cheaper ($1.50 vs $3.50 per 1M blended).
- Gemini 3.6 Flash streams 2.0× faster (210 vs 107 tokens per second).
| Metric | Gemini 3.6 Flash | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 60.8 | 61.6 |
| Coding score | 49.8 | 62.0 |
| Composite score | 72.5 | 54.5 |
| Knowledge score | 74.8 | 58.0 |
| Long context score | 66.5 | 63.8 |
| Maths score | 54.8 | 78.6 |
| Multimodal score | 67.9 | 57.9 |
| Agents & tools score | – | 70.3 |
| Human preference score | – | 62.3 |
| Instruction following score | – | 65.0 |
| Reasoning score | – | 61.5 |
| Blended price $/M | $1.50 | $3.50 |
| Output speed | 210 tok/s | 107 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 16.4 s | 6.3 s |
| Context window | 1.0M | 200k |
| FrontierCode | 34.4% | – |
| ProofBench | 36.0% | – |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 154.3 | 146.9 |
| LMArena Text | – | 1432 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | – | 1441 |
| LMArena Coding | – | 1460 |
| LMArena Vision | – | 1214 |
| AA Intelligence Index | 34.3 | 20.2 |
| IFBench | – | 71.4% |
| AA-LCR | 80.0% | 74.7% |
| MMMU-Pro | 83.2% | 70.1% |
| AA-Omniscience | 22.1 | -15.6 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | – | 37.1% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 92.8% | 82.7% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 40.8% | 20.1% |
| SciCode (AA) | 53.4% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | – | 80.7% |
| AIME 2026 | 96.7% | – |
| HMMT February 2026 | 89.4% | – |
| MathArena Apex | 26.0% | – |
| PRBench Finance | – | 47.7% |
| PRBench Legal | – | 48.6% |
| MMMU (validation) | – | 82.9% |
| MMMU-Pro (official) | – | 76.4% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | – | 67.6% |
| IFEval (HELM) | – | 86.9% |
| Omni-MATH (HELM) | – | 71.4% |
| WildBench (HELM) | – | 86.1% |
| MMLU-Pro (HELM) | – | 85.9% |
| GPQA Diamond (HELM) | – | 75.3% |
| HELM Capabilities mean | – | 81.1% |
| Aider Polyglot | – | 81.3% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | – | 58.4% |
| SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold) | – | 58.4% |
| BFCL Overall | – | 63.0% |
Data as of 2026-09-12. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Gemini 3.6 Flash vs o3: questions
- Is Gemini 3.6 Flash better than o3?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash and o3 are level on quality (60.8 vs 61.6). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; o3 is ahead overall as of 2026-09-12, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Gemini 3.6 Flash better than o3 for coding?
- o3 scores higher in coding (62 vs 50 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.6 Flash or o3?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper: $1.50 against $3.50 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Gemini 3.6 Flash or o3?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash streams faster: 210 against 107 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1.0M against 200k tokens.