Model comparison

Gemini 3.6 Flash vs o4-mini

Gemini 3.6 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.1 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 33 shared benchmarks.

Gemini 3.6 Flash Google

54.1

Rank #33 Confirmed

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 33 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.6 Flash scores higher in 7 categories and o4-mini in 3 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Gemini 3.6 Flash leads 58.8 to 24.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-2: 60.4% for Gemini 3.6 Flash and 6.1% for o4-mini.
  • Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper at $0.75 / $3.75 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
  • Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 200K.

Side by side

Gemini 3.6 Flash and o4-mini specifications
Gemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
ProviderGoogleOpenAI
Noometry Index54.141.6
Released2026-07-212025-04-16
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1.05M200K
Max output66K100K
Input $ / M tokens$0.75$1.10
Output $ / M tokens$3.75$4.40
Results tracked4660

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Category by category

Coding Gemini 3.6 Flash leads

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 50.0 (#48), o4-mini: 40.9 (#127)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
WeirdML56.1%52.6%
LMArena Coding14911368
ALE-Bench715.52826.17
DeepSWE46.7%—
FrontierCode34.4%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—45%
Aider Polyglot—72%
LMArena WebDev1538—
SciCode52.7%—
GSO—3.6%
CadEval—62%
AlgoTune—1.72

Agentic & Tool Use Too close to call

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 32.3 (#65), o4-mini: 32.6 (#61)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
APEX-Agents46.9%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—53.2%
GDPval—25.3%
GDP.pdf14%—
METR Time Horizons—63.9%

Reasoning Gemini 3.6 Flash leads

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 58.8 (#22), o4-mini: 24.6 (#162)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
ARC-AGI-260.4%6.1%
ARC-AGI-191.2%58.7%
CritPt10.6%0.6%
Chess Puzzles43%26%
LMArena Hard Prompts14851351
Mystery Game Puzzles30%5%
DTBench95.5%77.6%
LMCA44.9%26.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index154.25145.64
SimpleBench—38.7%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—67.6%
NYT Connections (extended)89%—
EnigmaEval—9.2%
ForecastBench—61.8

Math Gemini 3.6 Flash leads

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 57.3 (#40), o4-mini: 40.8 (#89)

Knowledge Gemini 3.6 Flash leads

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 67.8 (#8), o4-mini: 43.6 (#91)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
GPQA Diamond94.1%79.6%
SimpleQA Verified66.2%19.6%
LMArena Expert14881343
Humanity's Last Exam—18.1%
MMLU-Pro—82%
Confabulations—15.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—18.6%
GPQA (HELM)—73.5%

Multimodal o4-mini leads

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 38.5 (#64), o4-mini: 40.2 (#49)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
LMArena Vision12981194
GeoBench—64%
VPCT—57.5%
Blueprint-Bench 231.2%—
Furniture Assembly23.3%—
LMArena Document1456—

Multilingual Gemini 3.6 Flash leads

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 56.5 (#19), o4-mini: 47.0 (#154)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
LMArena Non-English14691337
LMArena Chinese15311354
LMArena French15041364
LMArena German14781336
LMArena Japanese14761308
LMArena Korean14311312
LMArena Russian14871334
LMArena Spanish14751347

Instruction Following Gemini 3.6 Flash leads

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 77.0 (#33), o4-mini: 75.2 (#68)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
LMArena Instruction Following14661321
IFEval—92.8%

Long Context Too close to call

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 45.1 (#50), o4-mini: 45.5 (#33)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
LMArena Longer Query14741315
Fiction.LiveBench—77.8%

Writing & Preference Gemini 3.6 Flash leads

Gemini 3.6 Flash: 68.2 (#27), o4-mini: 54.0 (#152)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGemini 3.6 Flasho4-mini
LMArena Text14791353
LMArena Creative Writing14651294
LMArena Multi-Turn14811350
Short-Story Creative Writing—75%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1604—
WildBench—85.4%

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemini 3.6 Flash better than o4-mini?

Gemini 3.6 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.1 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.6 Flash or o4-mini?

Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

Is Gemini 3.6 Flash or o4-mini better for coding?

Gemini 3.6 Flash scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.0 versus 40.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.6 Flash does, with 1.05M tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.6 Flash and o4-mini share?

33 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.6 Flash has 46 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.

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