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 62. 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 40.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 74 to 36.
GPT-5.2 Instant is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.50 input / $6.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.50 input / $3.00 output per 1M tokens for Gemini 3 Flash. That is roughly 2.0x on output cost alone. GPT-5.2 Instant is the reasoning model in the pair, while Gemini 3 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 3 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 3 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 3 Flash
57.5
GPT-5.2 Instant
75.5
Gemini 3 Flash
40.4
GPT-5.2 Instant
93.1
Gemini 3 Flash
79.6
GPT-5.2 Instant
90.9
Gemini 3 Flash
72
GPT-5.2 Instant
79.8
Gemini 3 Flash
52.9
GPT-5.2 Instant
95
Gemini 3 Flash
85
GPT-5.2 Instant
94.4
Gemini 3 Flash
80.5
GPT-5.2 Instant
97.2
Gemini 3 Flash
74
GPT-5.2 Instant is ahead overall, 85 to 62. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 74 and 36.
GPT-5.2 Instant has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.8 versus 52.9. Inside this category, HLE 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 40.4. 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 74. 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 72. 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 57.5. 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 79.6. Inside this category, MMMU-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 85. 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 80.5. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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