1-bit Bonsai 8B vs Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

1-bit Bonsai 8B· Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite

Quick Verdict

Pick Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite if you want the stronger benchmark profile. 1-bit Bonsai 8B only becomes the better choice if mathematics is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 56 to 50. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 67.4 against 50. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 30% to 62%. 1-bit Bonsai 8B does hit back in mathematics, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.10 input / $0.40 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for 1-bit Bonsai 8B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 64K for 1-bit Bonsai 8B.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*$0.10 / $0.40
SpeedN/A205 t/s
TTFTN/A7.50s
Context64K1M

Decision framing

BenchLM keeps the benchmark table and the operator tradeoffs on the same page so a better score does not hide a materially slower, pricier, or smaller-context model.

Runtime metrics show N/A when BenchLM does not have a sourced snapshot for that exact model. The scoring rules and freshness policy are documented on the methodology page.

Benchmark1-bit Bonsai 8BGemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
Agentic
Terminal-Bench 2.047%
BrowseComp60%
OSWorld-Verified44%
Coding
HumanEval55%
SWE-bench Verified22%
LiveCodeBench21%
SWE-bench Pro29%
Multimodal & Grounded
MMMU-Pro74%
OfficeQA Pro72%
ReasoningGemini 3.1 Flash-Lite wins
MuSR50%58%
BBH74%
LongBench v269%
MRCRv273%
KnowledgeGemini 3.1 Flash-Lite wins
GPQA30%62%
MMLU63%
SuperGPQA60%
MMLU-Pro63%
HLE1%
FrontierScience55%
SimpleQA60%
Instruction Following1-bit Bonsai 8B wins
IFEval79.8%79%
Multilingual
MGSM73%
MMLU-ProX68%
Mathematics1-bit Bonsai 8B wins
MATH-50066%71%
AIME 202363%
AIME 202465%
AIME 202564%
HMMT Feb 202359%
HMMT Feb 202461%
HMMT Feb 202560%
BRUMO 202562%
Frequently Asked Questions (5)

Which is better, 1-bit Bonsai 8B or Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite?

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is ahead overall, 56 to 50. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 30% and 62%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, 1-bit Bonsai 8B or Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite?

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 46.4 versus 30. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, 1-bit Bonsai 8B or Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite?

1-bit Bonsai 8B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 66 versus 65.1. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, 1-bit Bonsai 8B or Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite?

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 67.4 versus 50. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, 1-bit Bonsai 8B or Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite?

1-bit Bonsai 8B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 79.8 versus 79. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

Weekly LLM Benchmark Digest

Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.

Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.