Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
Gemini 3.8 Flash scores higher on the Models at Work leaderboard (77 vs 63 out of 100). Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is about 1.8× cheaper per blended million tokens ($0.85 vs $1.50). On Artificial Analysis' independent Intelligence Index, Gemini 3.8 Flash leads 41 to 22.
| Gemini 3.8 Flash · Google | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite · Google | |
|---|---|---|
| Leaderboard rank | #12 | #19 |
| Score (0–100) | 77 | 63 |
| Tier | Fast and cheap | Fast and cheap |
| Price per 1M tokens | $0.75 in · $3.75 out | $0.30 in · $2.50 out |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index | 41 | 22 |
| Arena Text score | 1497 (rank 8) | 1455 (rank 70) |
| Scale SWE-Bench Pro V2 (mini-swe-agent) | 58.80% | — |
| Best for | Agentic coding on a budget, Frontend generation, High-volume multimodal pipelines | Classification and extraction pipelines, Routing and triage, Agentic search at volume |
Choose Gemini 3.8 Flash if…
- you need agentic coding on a budget
- you need frontend generation
- you need high-volume multimodal pipelines
The best cheap model for long-running agent loops: rank 8 on Arena, 128 tok/s, and the only sub-$1 model on Scale's SWE-Bench Pro V2 board. Hallucinates more than Claude-class models and the price doubles in January.
Caveats: $0.75/$3.75 is introductory; Google's pricing page says it goes to $1.50/$7.50 on 2027-01-01. HN users report more hallucination and dropped context between turns than rival models; verify outputs. Third Flash release in six weeks (3.6, 3.7, 3.8). Expect short model lifecycles and deprecation churn.
Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite if…
- you need classification and extraction pipelines
- you need routing and triage
- you need agentic search at volume
Google's volume tier: 1M context, ~430 tok/s, $0.30/$2.50, and a respectable Arena rank 70. The right default for classification, extraction and routing at scale. Not a reasoning model in any serious sense (AA 22).
Caveats: Output at $2.50/1M is pricier than GPT-6 Luna or GLM-5.3-Flash for the intelligence you get; the win is speed, not cost per token. Google has shipped three Flash-Lite generations in 2026; plan for deprecation cycles.
What practitioners say
Gemini 3.8 Flash: Huge HN thread (1,160 points, 669 comments). simonw built an HTML visualisation in '13 seconds' for '1.8 cents'; colechristensen calls it 'competitive with opus/fable and also FAST'; several use it as the workhorse model with a stronger planner. The pushback is about reliability: one user says it 'gives me the most hallucinations' of the major models, others complain it ignores context between consecutive messages, and the uneven knowledge cutoff (some domains stuck at early 2025) bites in research tasks.
Questions people ask
Which is better, Gemini 3.8 Flash or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?
Gemini 3.8 Flash scores higher on the Models at Work leaderboard (77 vs 63 out of 100). Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is about 1.8× cheaper per blended million tokens ($0.85 vs $1.50). On Artificial Analysis' independent Intelligence Index, Gemini 3.8 Flash leads 41 to 22.
When should I choose Gemini 3.8 Flash over Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?
Choose Gemini 3.8 Flash for agentic coding on a budget, frontend generation, high-volume multimodal pipelines. The best cheap model for long-running agent loops: rank 8 on Arena, 128 tok/s, and the only sub-$1 model on Scale's SWE-Bench Pro V2 board. Hallucinates more than Claude-class models and the price doubles in January.
When should I choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite over Gemini 3.8 Flash?
Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite for classification and extraction pipelines, routing and triage, agentic search at volume. Google's volume tier: 1M context, ~430 tok/s, $0.30/$2.50, and a respectable Arena rank 70. The right default for classification, extraction and routing at scale. Not a reasoning model in any serious sense (AA 22).
Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.8 Flash or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?
Gemini 3.8 Flash costs $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens on Google's list price (Gemini API Pricing, read Oct 11, 2026). Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens on Google's list price (Gemini API Pricing, read Oct 11, 2026).
Scores come from the Models at Work leaderboard: Score is 0 to 100 and computed, not typed: 55% independent evals (Artificial Analysis, Arena, Scale SEAL, Epoch, each scaled against its natural floor and the best score in this table, then averaged), 15% blended price on a fixed log scale ($0.05 per million is 100, $60 is 0), 15% practitioner sentiment from Signals and community threads, 15% operational fit (context window, open weights). A missing component drops out and the rest are reweighted. A model with no independent eval yet is provisional and ranks below every measured one. Within three points is a tie. Vendor-published figures are labelled and never counted. Prices are vendor list prices where published; blended figures assume three input tokens per output token.