Compare/Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) vs o3

Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)vso3

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Google

Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)

Input
$1.5/M
Output
$9/M
Speed
197 tok/s
TTFT
0.86s
OpenAI

o3

Input
$2/M
Output
$8/M
Speed
130 tok/s
TTFT
6.23s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)
Faster (tok/s)
Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)
Lower Latency
Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)
Benchmarks (6-6)
Tie

Pricing Comparison

MetricGemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)o3
Input ($/M tokens)$1.5$2
Output ($/M tokens)$9$8
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)$2.40
o3$2.80

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)
197 tok/s
o3
130 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)
0.86s
o3
6.23s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
43.338.4
Coding Index
47.138.4
Math Index
88.3
GPQA Diamond
82.8%82.7%
MMLU-Pro
85.3%
LiveCodeBench
80.8%
AIME 2025
88.3%
MATH-500
99.2%
Humanity's Last Exam
23.1%20.0%
SciCode
48.8%41.0%
IFBench
47.3%71.4%
TerminalBench
46.2%37.1%
Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal)6 wins
6 winso3

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) or o3?

Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $3.38/M tokens vs $3.50/M for o3.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

It's a tie — both models win 6 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) generates tokens faster at 197 tok/s vs 130 tok/s. Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) also has lower time-to-first-token (0.86s vs 6.23s).

When should I use Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) vs o3?

Choose based on your priorities: Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) for lower cost, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and Gemini 3.5 Flash (minimal) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.