Gemini 3.5 Flash vs ZAYA1-8B

Pick Gemini 3.5 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. ZAYA1-8B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Gemini 3.5 Flash is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 88 to 56. 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 instruction following, where it averages 76.3 against 74. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is IFBench, 76.3% to 52.6%. ZAYA1-8B does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Gemini 3.5 Flash is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.50 input / $9.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for ZAYA1-8B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Gemini 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 131K for ZAYA1-8B.