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 53. 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 24.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 48 to 22. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite does hit back in multimodal & grounded, 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 $0.10 input / $0.30 output per 1M tokens for Step 3.5 Flash. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 256K for Step 3.5 Flash.
Pick Step 3.5 Flash 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 need the larger 1M context window.
Step 3.5 Flash
60.2
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
49.2
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
24.7
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
73.1
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
65.8
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
45.3
Step 3.5 Flash
87
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
79
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
69.8
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
66.1
Step 3.5 Flash is ahead overall, 66 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 48 and 22.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 45.3. 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 24.7. 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 66.1. 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 65.8. 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 49.2. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 73.1 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 79. 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 69.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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