Head-to-head comparison across 1benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
48
Grok 4.20
73
Pick Grok 4.20 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Multimodal
+2.4 difference
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
Grok 4.20
$0.25 / $1.5
$2 / $6
205 t/s
233 t/s
7.50s
10.33s
1M
2M
Pick Grok 4.20 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Grok 4.20 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 73 to 48. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Grok 4.20 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $2.00 input / $6.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.25 input / $1.50 output per 1M tokens for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite. That is roughly 4.0x on output cost alone. Grok 4.20 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite 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. Grok 4.20 gives you the larger context window at 2M, compared with 1M for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite.
Grok 4.20 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 73 to 48. The biggest single separator in this matchup is CharXiv, where the scores are 73.2% and 60.9%.
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 73.2 versus 70.8. Inside this category, CharXiv is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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