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 62. 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 mathematics, where it averages 84.5 against 74. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MuSR, 82 to 65. Gemini 3 Flash does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Gemini 3 Flash is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.50 input / $3.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.10 input / $0.30 output per 1M tokens for Step 3.5 Flash. That is roughly 10.0x on output cost alone. Gemini 3 Flash 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 Flash 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 Flash
57.5
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
Gemini 3 Flash
40.4
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
Gemini 3 Flash
79.6
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
Gemini 3 Flash
72
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
Gemini 3 Flash
52.9
Step 3.5 Flash
87
Gemini 3 Flash
85
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
Gemini 3 Flash
80.5
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
Gemini 3 Flash
74
Step 3.5 Flash is ahead overall, 66 to 62. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MuSR, where the scores are 82 and 65.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 52.9. 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 40.4. Inside this category, HumanEval 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 74. 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 72. 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 57.5. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Gemini 3 Flash has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 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 85. 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 80.5. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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