Seed 1.6 Flash vs Nova Pro

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

Seed 1.6 Flash is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 56 to 38. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Seed 1.6 Flash's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 73.1 against 41.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 74 to 37.

Seed 1.6 Flash is the reasoning model in the pair, while Nova Pro 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. Seed 1.6 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Nova Pro.

Quick Verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Nova Pro only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Seed 1.6 Flash

Seed 1.6 Flash

54.5

Nova Pro

33.3

52
Terminal-Bench 2.0
31
62
BrowseComp
39
52
OSWorld-Verified
32

Coding

Seed 1.6 Flash

Seed 1.6 Flash

27.6

Nova Pro

17.2

59
HumanEval
33
24
SWE-bench Verified
19
25
LiveCodeBench
14
31
SWE-bench Pro
20

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6 Flash

Seed 1.6 Flash

73.1

Nova Pro

41.1

74
MMMU-Pro
37
72
OfficeQA Pro
46

Reasoning

Seed 1.6 Flash

Seed 1.6 Flash

66.8

Nova Pro

46.3

61
SimpleQA
39
59
MuSR
37
75
BBH
63
70
LongBench v2
51
74
MRCRv2
51

Knowledge

Seed 1.6 Flash

Seed 1.6 Flash

47.3

Nova Pro

34.2

65
MMLU
41
64
GPQA
40
62
SuperGPQA
38
60
OpenBookQA
36
65
MMLU-Pro
53
3
HLE
4
57
FrontierScience
41

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6 Flash

Seed 1.6 Flash

81

Nova Pro

66

81
IFEval
66

Multilingual

Seed 1.6 Flash

Seed 1.6 Flash

72.8

Nova Pro

60.4

76
MGSM
61
71
MMLU-ProX
60

Mathematics

Seed 1.6 Flash

Seed 1.6 Flash

67.1

Nova Pro

48.6

64
AIME 2023
41
66
AIME 2024
43
65
AIME 2025
42
60
HMMT Feb 2023
37
62
HMMT Feb 2024
39
61
HMMT Feb 2025
38
63
BRUMO 2025
40
72
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash is ahead overall, 56 to 38. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 74 and 37.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 47.3 versus 34.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 27.6 versus 17.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 67.1 versus 48.6. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 66.8 versus 46.3. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 54.5 versus 33.3. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 73.1 versus 41.1. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 81 versus 66. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Seed 1.6 Flash or Nova Pro?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 72.8 versus 60.4. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

Weekly LLM Benchmark Digest

Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.

Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.