Gemini 3 Flash vs o1

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

Gemini 3 Flash is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 51. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Gemini 3 Flash's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 47.3 against 41. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 70 to 91.8. o1 does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

o1 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $15.00 input / $60.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.50 input / $3.00 output per 1M tokens for Gemini 3 Flash. That is roughly 20.0x on output cost alone. o1 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 200K for o1.

Quick Verdict

Pick Gemini 3 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o1 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Knowledge

o1

Gemini 3 Flash

58.2

o1

83.8

70
MMLU
91.8
69
GPQA
75.7
67
SuperGPQA
-
65
OpenBookQA
-
72
MMLU-Pro
-
6
HLE
-

Coding

Gemini 3 Flash

Gemini 3 Flash

47.3

o1

41

62
HumanEval
-
44
SWE-bench Verified
41
36
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

o1

Gemini 3 Flash

70.4

o1

74.3

70
AIME 2023
-
72
AIME 2024
74.3
71
AIME 2025
-
66
HMMT Feb 2023
-
68
HMMT Feb 2024
-
67
HMMT Feb 2025
-
69
BRUMO 2025
-
80
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Gemini 3 Flash
67
SimpleQA
-
65
MuSR
-
84
BBH
-

Instruction Following

o1

Gemini 3 Flash

85

o1

92.2

85
IFEval
92.2

Multilingual

Gemini 3 Flash
85
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Gemini 3 Flash or o1?

Gemini 3 Flash is ahead overall, 65 to 51. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 70 and 91.8.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Gemini 3 Flash or o1?

o1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.8 versus 58.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Gemini 3 Flash or o1?

Gemini 3 Flash has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 47.3 versus 41. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Gemini 3 Flash or o1?

o1 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 74.3 versus 70.4. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Gemini 3 Flash or o1?

o1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 92.2 versus 85. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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