Gemini 2.5 Pro vs Gemini 3.5 Flash

Pick Gemini 3.5 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 2.5 Pro only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Gemini 3.5 Flash is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 88 to 64. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Gemini 3.5 Flash's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 58 against 40.8. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HLE, 18.8% to 40.2%. Gemini 2.5 Pro does hit back in coding, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Gemini 2.5 Pro is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.25 input / $10.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $1.50 input / $9.00 output per 1M tokens for Gemini 3.5 Flash. Gemini 3.5 Flash is the reasoning model in the pair, while Gemini 2.5 Pro 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.