Patchwire

Google · Released Mar 3, 2026

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview is Google's high-efficiency model optimized for high-volume use cases. It outperforms Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite on overall quality and approaches Gemini 2.5 Flash performance across...

ReasoningVision
Compare in showdown → OpenRouter ↗ All Google models
Released
Mar 3 2026
Context window
1M 66K out
Input / 1M tokens
$0.25 from $0.13
Output / 1M tokens
$1.50 from $0.75

Where to run it

Providers

Cheapest: Google AI Studio at $0.13 / $0.75 per 1M input / output tokens — 72% less than the priciest option.

ProviderInputOutputCache readContextMax outputUptimevs. best
Google AI Studio $0.13 $0.75 $0.0121M66K100%24h Cheapest
Google AI Studio $0.25 $1.50 $0.0251M66K100%24h +100%
Google AI Studiopriority $0.45 $2.70 $0.0451M66K100%24h +260%

Value

Price vs. performance

13 models score higher for the same price or lesson GPQA Diamond, e.g. Kimi K3.
25.3%49.0%72.7%96.4% $0.01$0.10$1.00$10.00$100.00 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (DeepSeek) — 89.8% · $0.30/1M in Claude Haiku 5.5 (Anthropic) — 89.6% · $0.10/1M in Mistral Large 4 (Mistral) — 88.1% · $0.68/1M in GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI) — 95.4% · $2.00/1M in Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Anthropic) — 95.6% · $2.00/1M in GPT-6 Luna (OpenAI) — 90.5% · $0.10/1M in GPT-6 Sol (OpenAI) — 94.3% · $2.00/1M in Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) — 90.6% · $4.00/1M in Grok 4.7 (xAI) — 92.7% · $2.00/1M in DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (DeepSeek) — 89.8% · $0.056/1M in GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI) — 95.8% · $10.00/1M in Qwen3.8 Max (0902) (Qwen) — 92.7% · $2.00/1M in GLM 5.3 Flash (Z.ai) — 90.1% · $0.047/1M in GLM 5.3 (Z.ai) — 90.9% · $0.079/1M in DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (DeepSeek) — 91.7% · $0.66/1M in Grok 4.6 (xAI) — 94.0% · $2.00/1M in DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (DeepSeek) — 91.0% · $0.44/1M in Qwen3.7 Flash (Qwen) — 82.3% · $0.03/1M in Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) — 93.9% · $5.00/1M in Kimi K3 (Moonshot AI) — 93.1% · $0.24/1M in GPT-5.6 Luna (OpenAI) — 91.6% · $0.20/1M in GPT-5.6 Terra (OpenAI) — 93.3% · $2.00/1M in GPT-5.6 Sol (OpenAI) — 93.5% · $4.00/1M in Grok 4.5 (xAI) — 93.4% · $2.00/1M in Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic) — 90.5% · $2.00/1M in GLM 5.2 (Z.ai) — 91.9% · $0.62/1M in Kimi K2.7 Code (Moonshot AI) — 87.9% · $0.67/1M in Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic) — 85.9% · $10.00/1M in Qwen3.7 Plus (Qwen) — 87.9% · $0.32/1M in MiniMax M3 (MiniMax) — 90.9% · $0.30/1M in Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic) — 91.0% · $5.00/1M in Qwen3.7 Max (Qwen) — 90.9% · $1.48/1M in Grok 4.3 (xAI) — 88.8% · $1.25/1M in Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 (Qwen) — 84.9% · $0.30/1M in Qwen3.6 Flash (Qwen) — 83.3% · $0.19/1M in Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Qwen) — 84.9% · $0.10/1M in Qwen3.6 27B (Qwen) — 85.9% · $0.25/1M in GPT-5.5 (OpenAI) — 90.7% · $5.00/1M in DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 (DeepSeek) — 91.7% · $0.95/1M in DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 (DeepSeek) — 91.0% · $0.091/1M in Kimi K2.6 (Moonshot AI) — 90.8% · $0.65/1M in Claude Opus 4.7 (Anthropic) — 90.1% · $5.00/1M in GLM 5.1 (Z.ai) — 89.9% · $0.97/1M in Qwen3.6 Plus (Qwen) — 88.4% · $0.33/1M in GPT-5.4 Nano (OpenAI) — 78.5% · $0.20/1M in GPT-5.4 Mini (OpenAI) — 86.9% · $0.75/1M in Mistral Small 4 (Mistral) — 47.5% · $0.15/1M in Qwen3.5-9B (Qwen) — 79.0% · $0.10/1M in GPT-5.4 Pro (OpenAI) — 94.6% · $30.00/1M in GPT-5.4 (OpenAI) — 93.3% · $2.50/1M in Qwen3.5-35B-A3B (Qwen) — 83.5% · $0.15/1M in Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) — 87.4% · $3.00/1M in Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Qwen) — 86.4% · $0.39/1M in GLM 5 (Z.ai) — 87.8% · $0.60/1M in Claude Opus 4.6 (Anthropic) — 90.5% · $5.00/1M in GLM 4.7 Flash (Z.ai) — 60.5% · $0.061/1M in GLM 4.7 (Z.ai) — 83.3% · $0.54/1M in GPT-5.2 (OpenAI) — 91.4% · $1.75/1M in Ministral 3 8B 2512 (Mistral) — 27.2% · $0.15/1M in Ministral 3 3B 2512 (Mistral) — 25.3% · $0.10/1M in Mistral Large 3 2512 (Mistral) — 51.3% · $0.50/1M in Claude Opus 4.5 (Anthropic) — 86.1% · $5.00/1M in GPT-5.1 (OpenAI) — 87.6% · $1.25/1M in Claude Haiku 4.5 (Anthropic) — 71.2% · $1.00/1M in Claude Sonnet 4.5 (Anthropic) — 82.3% · $3.00/1M in GPT-5 (OpenAI) — 86.2% · $1.25/1M in GPT-5 Mini (OpenAI) — 75.0% · $0.25/1M in GPT-5 Nano (OpenAI) — 69.4% · $0.05/1M in gpt-oss-120b (OpenAI) — 75.8% · $0.15/1M in gpt-oss-20b (OpenAI) — 60.8% · $0.018/1M in Claude Opus 4.1 (Anthropic) — 77.3% · $15.00/1M in Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 (Qwen) — 55.6% · $0.09/1M in Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507 (Qwen) — 80.0% · $0.45/1M in Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 (Qwen) — 70.7% · $0.09/1M in R1 0528 (DeepSeek) — 76.3% · $0.50/1M in Qwen3 30B A3B (Qwen) — 61.7% · $0.12/1M in Qwen3 14B (Qwen) — 63.8% · $0.12/1M in Qwen3 32B (Qwen) — 65.7% · $0.08/1M in Gemini 4 Argon (Google) — 96.4% · $2.00/1M in Gemini 3.8 Flash (Google) — 95.4% · $0.82/1M in Gemini 3.7 Flash (Google) — 94.8% · $0.75/1M in Gemini 3.6 Flash (Google) — 94.1% · $0.75/1M in Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite (Google) — 83.3% · $0.30/1M in Gemini 3.5 Flash (Google) — 92.8% · $1.50/1M in Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite (Google) — 81.8% · $0.25/1M in Gemma 4 26B A4B (Google) — 73.2% · $0.09/1M in Gemma 4 31B (Google) — 75.8% · $0.20/1M in Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview (Google) — 94.4% · $2.00/1M in Gemini 3 Flash Preview (Google) — 89.4% · $0.50/1M in Gemini 2.5 Pro (Google) — 85.3% · $1.25/1M in Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview 06-05 (Google) — 85.3% · $1.25/1M in Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview (Google) — 81.8% · $0.25/1M in Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview Other Google Other labs Value frontier · GPQA Diamond vs. input price per 1M tokens (log scale) · Drag to pan, pinch or Ctrl + scroll to zoom, double-click to zoom in.

Benchmarks

9 benchmark scores

BenchmarkScoreRankLeader
SciCodeSoftware engineering · Research-coding problems from the natural sciences 43.4% #66of 93 Claude Opus 5.566.9%
DeepResearch BenchWriting & content · Find and synthesize information from the web 37.3% #16of 20 Claude Opus 4.655.3%
WebDev ArenaDesign & visual · People vote on which model builds the better website (Elo) 1254 #82of 88 Claude Opus 5.51820
GPQA DiamondReasoning & knowledge · PhD-level biology, chemistry and physics questions 81.8% #69of 92 Gemini 4 Argon96.4%
Humanity's Last ExamReasoning & knowledge · Expert questions across 100+ subjects 8.6% #20of 23 GPT-6 Astra54.8%
CritPtReasoning & knowledge · Open-ended, research-level physics problems 1.1% #75of 96 GPT-5.6 Sol32.3%
LMCAReasoning & knowledge · Judge the quality of conceptual arguments like experts 35.0% #65of 96 Claude Sonnet 5.568.3%
FrontierMathMaths · Expert-written problems, undergrad to early research (tiers 1–3) 27.7% #62of 72 GPT-6.1 Sol93.7%
OTIS Mock AIMEMaths · Competition-style problems harder than MATH Level 5 80.0% #71of 90 Gemini 4 Argon100.0%

Specs

Details

Model ID
google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview
Developer
Google
Release date
Mar 3, 2026 ·
Context window
1,048,576 tokens
Max output
65,536 tokens
API price
$0.25 / $1.50 per 1M input / output tokens
Providers
1
Input types
text, image, video, file, audio
Reasoning
Yes
Tool calling
Yes
Open weights
No
Free tier
No

Release date, prices and providers from OpenRouter's catalog; buying directly from a provider can cost a little differently. Uptime is the share of OpenRouter requests each provider served over the last day. Benchmark scores are the best result per benchmark from Epoch AI, licensed CC BY 4.0. Rank counts every model tracked here with a score.