# Gemini 3.6 Flash vs MiniMax M3

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Gemini 3.6 Flash and MiniMax M3 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/gemini-3-6-flash-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: September 4, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 6
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Gemini 3.6 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. MiniMax M3 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Gemini 3.6 Flash leads overall 70.11 to 63.91.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 82.3 for Gemini 3.6 Flash and 51.5 for MiniMax M3.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) in Agentic, with scores of 73.8% and 53.6%.
- MiniMax M3 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Gemini 3.6 Flash | MiniMax M3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Google | MiniMax |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 70.11 | 63.91 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 8 | 27 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $1.50 / $7.50 | $0.30 / $1.20 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Gemini 3.6 Flash
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 50.7 (Supported · #60/151)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 43.2 (Supported · #106/151)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.6 Flash | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| OSWorld-Verified | 83% | 70.1% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 73.8% | 53.6% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 66% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 83.5% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 74.5% | Coming soon |
| BankerToolBench | Coming soon | 76.1% | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | Coming soon | 19.8% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Coming soon | 4.6% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 58.9 (Supported · #30/183)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 50.6 (Estimated · #68/183)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.6 Flash | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| deepSwe | 49% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 53.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 88.1% | 82.2% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 75.0% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 80.5% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 59% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 66.0% | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 42.1% | Coming soon |
| VIBE V2 | Coming soon | 50.1% | Coming soon |
| SVG-Bench | Coming soon | 63.7% | Coming soon |
| KernelBench Hard | Coming soon | 28.8% | Coming soon |
| OpenHarmony Bench | Coming soon | 48.4% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 82.3 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 51.5 (#34/48)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.6 Flash | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| OfficeQA Pro | Coming soon | 45.1% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 91.6% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 78.1% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 84.6% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 85.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 77.8 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 78.5 (#5/22)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Gemini 3.6 Flash
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: 68.6 (Supported · #18/181)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 53.8 (Supported · #64/181)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.6 Flash | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 93.4% | 92.7% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 89.3% | 84.2% | Gemini 3.6 Flash |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 93.5 (#4/120)

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Gemini 3.6 Flash public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.6 Flash | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| USAMO 2026 | Coming soon | 85.7% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Gemini 3.6 Flash or MiniMax M3?

Gemini 3.6 Flash is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Gemini 3.6 Flash and MiniMax M3?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 82.3 for Gemini 3.6 Flash and 51.5 for MiniMax M3.

### How many benchmarks does Gemini 3.6 Flash cover on BenchLM?

Gemini 3.6 Flash currently has 8 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does MiniMax M3 cover on BenchLM?

MiniMax M3 currently has 27 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-gemini-3-6-flash)
- [MiniMax M3 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-minimax-m3)
- [Gemini 3.6 Flash vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gemini-3-6-flash-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [MiniMax M3 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-minimax-m3)

## Explore More

- [Gemini 3.6 Flash profile](/models/gemini-3-6-flash)
- [MiniMax M3 profile](/models/minimax-m3)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)