Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
GPT-5.2 Instant is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 85 to 49. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
GPT-5.2 Instant's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 75.5 against 21.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 74 to 18.
GPT-5.2 Instant is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.50 input / $6.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.15 input / $0.60 output per 1M tokens for Gemini 2.5 Flash. That is roughly 10.0x on output cost alone. GPT-5.2 Instant is the reasoning model in the pair, while Gemini 2.5 Flash is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Gemini 2.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for GPT-5.2 Instant.
Pick GPT-5.2 Instant if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 2.5 Flash only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you need the larger 1M context window.
GPT-5.2 Instant
79.6
Gemini 2.5 Flash
46.5
GPT-5.2 Instant
75.5
Gemini 2.5 Flash
21.7
GPT-5.2 Instant
93.1
Gemini 2.5 Flash
67.7
GPT-5.2 Instant
90.9
Gemini 2.5 Flash
59.2
GPT-5.2 Instant
79.8
Gemini 2.5 Flash
40.5
GPT-5.2 Instant
95
Gemini 2.5 Flash
79
GPT-5.2 Instant
94.4
Gemini 2.5 Flash
70.8
GPT-5.2 Instant
97.2
Gemini 2.5 Flash
59.4
GPT-5.2 Instant is ahead overall, 85 to 49. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 74 and 18.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.8 versus 40.5. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 75.5 versus 21.7. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 97.2 versus 59.4. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 90.9 versus 59.2. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 46.5. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 67.7. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 95 versus 79. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.4 versus 70.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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