Gemini 3 Flash vs GPT-6 Astra
Full profiles: Gemini 3 Flash (Google) and GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 9 sources
As of 29 Oct 2026, GPT-6 Astra is ahead of Gemini 3 Flash on quality (68.2 vs 59.0 on the BenchLeader Index), but Gemini 3 Flash is 18× cheaper at $1.13 vs $20.00 per 1M tokens blended. GPT-6 Astra leads in every category we measure both in. Gemini 3 Flash streams 3×+ faster.
Key facts (as of 29 Oct 2026)
- Gemini 3 Flash scores 59.0 on the BenchLeader Index and GPT-6 Astra scores 68.2 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).
- Gemini 3 Flash costs $1.13 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
- GPT-6 Astra costs $20.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
- Gemini 3 Flash streams 3×+ faster than GPT-6 Astra (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 29 Oct 2026).
Gemini 3 Flash benchmarks 
GPT-6 Astra benchmarks Which to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agents & tool use | GPT-6 Astra | 70 vs 55 category score | High |
| Lowest cost | Gemini 3 Flash | $1.13 vs $20.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.042 vs $0.800 | – |
| Fastest first answer | GPT-6 Astra | 3.0 s (GPT-6 Astra) vs 6.0 s (Gemini 3 Flash (thinking)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- GPT-6 Astra leads on quality: 68.2 vs 59.0.
- Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) is stronger in instruction following, long context, multimodal.
- GPT-6 Astra is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, knowledge, maths, reasoning.
- Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) is 18× cheaper ($1.13 vs $20.00 per 1M blended).
- Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) streams 5.2× faster (209 vs 40 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Gemini 3 Flash | GPT-6 Astra |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | OpenAI | |
| Released | 17 Dec 2025 | 2 Sept 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,048,576 | 1,050,000 |
| Compared at | Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) | GPT-6 Astra |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $0.500 / $3.00 / $0.050 | $10.00 / $50.00 / $1.00 |
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) | GPT-6 Astra | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | – | 85.6 | not comparable |
| Coding | – | 83.2 | not comparable |
| Agents & tools | 55.1 | 69.6 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Maths | – | 77.5 | not comparable |
| Knowledge | – | 55.7 | not comparable |
| Instruction following | 75.8 | – | not comparable |
| Multimodal | 62.7 | – | not comparable |
| Long context | 63.8 | – | not comparable |
| Composite | – | 73.7 | not comparable |
Where sources disagree
Across the 0 benchmarks both have, Gemini 3 Flash leads 0, GPT-6 Astra leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts GPT-6 Astra ahead.
| Overall index | Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) | GPT-6 Astra | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 59.0 | 68.2 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Arena Text | 1458† | 1477 | GPT-6 Astra |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page; suite cost is what Artificial Analysis paid to run its whole Intelligence Index.
| Measure | Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) | GPT-6 Astra |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $1.13 | $20.00 |
| Input / output per 1M | $0.500 / $3.00 | $10.00 / $50.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.050 | $1.00 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0011 | $0.019 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.0078 | $0.150 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.0075 | $0.135 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.042 | $0.800 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.0016 | $0.030 |
| Output speed | 209 tok/s | 40 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 6.0 s | 3.0 s |
| Time to a complete answer | 8.4 s | – |
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) scores 59.0 and takes 6 s to its first answer token; Gemini 3 Flash (high) scores 58.3 in 1 s, Gemini 3 Flash scores 57.0 in 1 s. GPT-6 Astra scores 68.2 and takes 3 s to its first answer token; GPT-6 Astra (max) scores 67.7 in 232 s, GPT-6 Astra (high) scores 66.8 in 33 s. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
177 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) | GPT-6 Astra |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 59.0 | 68.2 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | 55.1 | 69.6 |
| Instruction following score | BenchLeader | 75.8 | – |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 63.8 | – |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | 62.7 | – |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | – | 83.2 |
| Composite score | BenchLeader | – | 73.7 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | – | 55.7 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | – | 77.5 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | – | 85.6 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $1.13 | $20.00 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 209 tok/s | 40 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 6.0 s | 3.0 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,050,000 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 83.2%† | 95.8%† |
| Humanity's Last Exam | Scale AI / CAIS | – | 54.8% |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 61.1%† | – |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1493† | 1501† |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | – | 92.7% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | – | 92.7%† |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 89.8% | 96.1%† |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 36.6% | 54.7%† |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 63.8%† |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 87.9%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 84.7%† | 97.5%† |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 33.6%† | 95.0%† |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | – | 98.6%† |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 8.6% | 31.7%† |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 70.5%† |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | – | 53.1%† |
| SciPredict | Scale AI SEAL | 22.2%† | – |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 39.0%† | 74.0%† |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 20.0%† | 84.0%† |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 43.1%† | 64.1% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 89.1%† | 97.1% |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 64.7%† | – |
| BTF-3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 13.5%† |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 75.4%† | – |
| SciCode | SciCode | – | 56.5%† |
Show all 177 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Gemini 3 Flash (thinking) | GPT-6 Astra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 61.6%† | 93.3%† |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | – | 53.3%† |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | 9.8%† | 79.4% |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1506† | 1543† |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1440† | 1774† |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | – | 93.7% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | – | 80.4%† |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 85.6%† | – |
| IOI | Vals AI | – | 100.0%† |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 75.0%† | – |
| SWE-Bench Pro | Scale AI SEAL | 34.6%† | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | SWE-bench | 75.8%† | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold) | SWE-bench | 75.8%† | – |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | 6.4%† | 67.7%† |
| Code Migration v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 80.6%† |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | 0.0%† | 5.5%† |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | Vals AI | – | 43.3%† |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | – | 27.6%† |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 20.2%† | 89.6%† |
| SWE-Bench Pro (private) | Scale AI SEAL | 34.6%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | 8.2%† | 59.1%† |
| SWE Atlas: Refactoring | Scale AI SEAL | 10.0%† | 59.0%† |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | 30.3%† | 50.7%† |
| MirrorCode | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 46.7%† |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 73.2%† |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 1367.2† | 2951.3† |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 65.5%† |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 59.1%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 88.4%† |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | – | 79.9% |
| FrontierCode 1.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 47.0%† |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 42.4%† |
| LiveCodeBench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 90.8% | – |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 64.3%† | 58.2%† |
| Remote Labor Index | Scale AI / CAIS | – | 20.8% |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | – | 64.7% |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | – | 14† |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | – | 77.5% |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | – | 91.3% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | – | 57.3%† |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | Artificial Analysis | 38.6% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 80.4% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | 53.9%† | 87.3%† |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 62.0%† | – |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | – | 65.3% |
| τ²-bench | τ²-bench | 83.5%† | – |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 27.3%† | – |
| GDPval-AA v2.1, normalised score | Artificial Analysis | – | 53.7%† |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 1584† |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 20.8% | 41.4%† |
| ITBench SRE (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 48.6%† |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 51.3%† |
| APEX-Agents (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 27.7% | – |
| CUA-bench | Vals AI | – | 19.2%† |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | – | 41.1%† |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | 42.5%† | 53.5%† |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | – | 60.4%† |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 7.1%† |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | 0.0%† | 5.4%† |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 18.3%† | 39.4%† |
| Poker Agent | Vals AI | 1100.2%† | – |
| Robo-bench | Vals AI | – | 23.3%† |
| SREBench | Vals AI | – | 56.9%† |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 11.8%† | 20.7%† |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 51.7%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 59.6%† |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | – | 62.9%† |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | – | 90.5%† |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | – | 1246† |
| BALROG | BALROG | 48.1%† | 68.3%† |
| DeepResearch Bench | DeepResearch Bench | 47.9%† | – |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 3634.7† | 15514.7 |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | – | 68.5%† |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 31.0%† |
| Harvey LAB-AA v1.1 | Harvey | – | 8.6%† |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 1568† |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 63.3%† |
| CWE-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 63.3%† |
| DeepSec-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 36.9%† |
| CyberGym end-to-end (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 0.0%† |
| BrowseComp | OpenAI | 16.9%† | – |
| FACTS Search | 80.9%† | 89.9% | |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 51.2%† | 93.7%† |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 17.1%† | 97.6%† |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 92.8%† | 100.0%† |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 15.0%† | 99.0% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | – | 96.8%† |
| AIME (Vals) | Vals AI | 95.6%† | – |
| MGSM | Vals AI | 93.3%† | – |
| AIME 2026 | MathArena | 96.7%† | – |
| HMMT February 2026 | MathArena | 89.4%† | – |
| MathArena Apex | MathArena | 15.6%† | – |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1475† | 1487† |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 66.8%† | 75.6%† |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | – | 83.0% |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | – | 85.2% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | – | 83.0%† |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 42.4† |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 88.6%† | – |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 86.9%† | – |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 66.4%† | – |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 73.9%† | – |
| MedQA | Vals AI | 95.8%† | – |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | – | 47.5% |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | – | 48.4% |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | – | 79.3%† |
| CaseLaw v2 | Vals AI | 55.8%† | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | 26.0%† | 71.7%† |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 72.7%† |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 55.9%† | 48.5%† |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 69.9%† | 87.9%† |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | – | 68.7%† |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 76.2%† |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 10.0%† | 34.2%† |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | – | 61.6%† |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | – | 50.2%† |
| Global-MMLU-Lite (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 92.8%† | – |
| HealthBench Professional (AA) | OpenAI | – | 66.0%† |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | – | 89.4%† |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | – | 75.6%† |
| IFBench | Artificial Analysis | 78.0% | – |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1458† | 1473† |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1473† | 1477† |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1457† | 1450† |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1482† | 1485† |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1476† | 1489† |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1285† | 1280† |
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | – | 82.0% |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 79.9% | 86.9%† |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 87.6%† | – |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 68.7%† | – |
| GeoBench | GeoBench | 88.0%† | – |
| VPCT | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 72.6%† | – |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 0.0%† | 49.7% |
| Code2Video-AA | Artificial Analysis | – | 1427† |
| AA-3D | Artificial Analysis | – | 1164† |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 78.0% | 80.7%† |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1439† | 1473† |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | – | 41.7%† |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 151.9† | 168.8 |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | – | 85.6% |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | – | 82.2%† |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | – | 56.9† |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 26.3 | 52.7† |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | 290.1 | 349.6† |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | – | 65.0† |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | – | 55.6%† |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | – | 27.1%† |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | – | 65.1%† |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | 52.2%† | – |
| Vals Router Index | Vals AI | – | 65.0% |
| AA Cyber Index | Artificial Analysis | – | 33.4† |
Data as of 2026-10-29. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
What changed
- Gemini 3 Flash (thinking): BenchLeader Index 60.1 → 59.0.
- Gemini 3 Flash (thinking): 1 new result (AA Progress Index v1).
- GPT-6 Astra: 3 score revisions.
- GPT-6 Astra: 1 new result (Vals Router Index).
- GPT-6 Astra: 1 score revision.
- GPT-6 Astra: 8 new results (LiveBench 2.0, LiveBench Long Agentic, LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning…).
- Gemini 3 Flash (thinking): 2 new results (AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy, AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination).
- GPT-6 Astra: 1 new result (Startrise Frontend).
- GPT-6 Astra: BenchLeader Index 68.9 → 68.0.
- GPT-6 Astra: BenchLeader Index 67.3 → 68.9.
Related comparisons
- Gemini 3 Flash vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Gemini 3 Flash vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- Gemini 3 Flash vs Claude Fable 5.1
- GPT-6 Astra vs Claude Opus 5.5
- GPT-6 Astra vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- GPT-6 Astra vs Claude Fable 5.1
- GPT-6 Astra vs Claude Fable 5
- Gemini 3 Pro vs GPT-6 Astra
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Gemini 3 Flash vs GPT-6 Astra: questions
- Is GPT-6 Astra better than Gemini 3 Flash?
- GPT-6 Astra leads on quality: 68.2 vs 59.0. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; GPT-6 Astra is ahead overall as of 29 Oct 2026, but check the category scores for your use.
- Gemini 3 Flash vs GPT-6 Astra: which is cheaper, and will that change?
- Gemini 3 Flash is cheaper today: $1.13 against $20.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
- Which is faster, Gemini 3 Flash or GPT-6 Astra?
- Gemini 3 Flash streams 3×+ faster (209 vs 40 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
- Is Gemini 3 Flash or GPT-6 Astra better for agents and tool use?
- GPT-6 Astra scores higher in agentic tasks (70 vs 55 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is better for long documents?
- Both take about 1.1M tokens: Gemini 3 Flash 1,048,576, GPT-6 Astra 1,050,000.
More questions (2)
- Which has lower latency?
- GPT-6 Astra answers first: 3.0 s against 6.0 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- When was GPT-6 Astra released?
- GPT-6 Astra was released on 2 Sept 2026.