Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Step 3.5 Flash is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 66 to 52. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Step 3.5 Flash's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 47.1 against 18.5. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 48 to 5. Gemini 1.5 Pro does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Gemini 1.5 Pro gives you the larger context window at 2M, compared with 256K for Step 3.5 Flash.
Pick Step 3.5 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 1.5 Pro only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you need the larger 2M context window.
Step 3.5 Flash
60.2
Gemini 1.5 Pro
49.8
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
Gemini 1.5 Pro
18.5
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
Gemini 1.5 Pro
74.1
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
Gemini 1.5 Pro
66.9
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
Gemini 1.5 Pro
44.2
Step 3.5 Flash
87
Gemini 1.5 Pro
77
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
Gemini 1.5 Pro
69.5
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
Gemini 1.5 Pro
67.5
Step 3.5 Flash is ahead overall, 66 to 52. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 48 and 5.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 44.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 47.1 versus 18.5. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 84.5 versus 67.5. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 66.9. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.2 versus 49.8. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Gemini 1.5 Pro has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.1 versus 66.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 77. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.8 versus 69.5. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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