Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs Gemini 2.5 Flash
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
| Specification |
by Google
|
by Google
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current budget | Deprecated budget |
| Released | ||
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $0.300/Mtok | $0.300/Mtok |
| Output | $2.50/Mtok | $2.50/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $0.850/Mtok | $0.850/Mtok |
| Cached input | $0.030/Mtok | — |
| Price basis | Verified against Google's Gemini API pricing page (ai.google.dev) on 2026-07-28: the Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite Standard paid tier is $0.30/1M input, $2.50/1M output, $0.03/1M context caching (batch tier $0.15/$1.25). The identical $0.30/$2.50 price shared with the deprecated Gemini 2.5 Flash reflects Google's uniform Flash tier pricing, not a placeholder — the value matches LiteLLM gemini/gemini-3.5-flash-lite. | — |
| Specifications | ||
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Parameters | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Speed (TPS) | — | — |
| Modalities | ||
| Input |
textimageaudiovideo
|
textimageaudiovideo
|
| Benchmarks sources: Artificial Analysis, Google DeepMind Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite model card, LMSYS Chatbot Arena (UC Berkeley) / Vellum LLM Leaderboard | ||
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 54 vendor | 16.9 |
| Avg benchmark score | — | 50.2 |
| Perf / dollar | — | 59.1 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 78.3 |
| SWE-Bench Verified | — | 38 |
| LiveCodeBench | — | 63.5 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 74 vendor | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 12.1 |
| ARC-AGI 2 | — | 15 |
| AIME 2025 | — | 78 |
| MMMLU | — | 78 |
| MATH 500 | — | 72 |
| Independent composite scores each on its own scale — not part of the average above | ||
| LMSYS Chatbot Arena | 1456.9 ELO | 1409.8 ELO |
| AA Intelligence Index | 37.4 | — |
| AA Agentic Index | 27.2 | — |
| AA-Omniscience Index (−100–100) | 5.2 | — |
| GDPval-AA v2 | 1136.3 ELO | — |
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
Google — $0.300/$2.50/Mtok
|
Google — $0.300/$2.50/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Gemini 2.5 Flash | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $0.85 | $0.85 | $0 (0%) |
| 10M tokens | $8.5 | $8.5 | $0 (0%) |
| 100M tokens | $85 | $85 | $0 (0%) |
| 1000M tokens | $850 | $850 | $0 (0%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above- your workload re-reads context (agents, RAG, long chats): cached input costs $0.030/Mtok — 90% off its list input price, a discount Gemini 2.5 Flash doesn't offer
- this pairing gives Gemini 2.5 Flash no edge on price, context, cache discount, or measured performance — pick it only for qualitative fit (ecosystem, compliance, model behavior on your prompts)
Price movement
recorded changes since we began tracking each model · last checked| Model | Changes | Latest move | Old → new $/M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | 0 | — no move | Stable since we began tracking — no change recorded |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 2 | price rise on | $0.075/$0.3 → $0.3/$2.5/Mtok |
The cheaper option here — Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite costs $0.850/Mtok blended on Google.
Summary
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite by Google costs $0.300/Mtok input and $2.50/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image, audio, video input.
Gemini 2.5 Flash by Google costs $0.300/Mtok input and $2.50/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image, audio, video input.
The two aren't directly comparable on average benchmark score: Gemini 2.5 Flash has published per-benchmark results, while Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite does not yet — it is measured today on independent composites (see the table above).
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.