Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash

Gemini 3.5 Flash
Google · Balanced · Proprietary
$3.75/1M · 1.0M ctx
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Google · Balanced · Proprietary
$1.65/1M · 1.0M ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for money
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Maker
Google
Google
Blended price / 1M
$3.75
$1.65
Input / output
$1.50 in · $9.00 out / 1M tokens
$0.75 in · $3.75 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
1.0M
Open weights
No
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
8.9
9.1
Agentic Ability
8.9
8.9
Speed
9.4
9.2
Value for money
8.7
8.8
Reliability
8.9
8.9

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Gemini 3.5 Flash or Gemini 3.8 Flash?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash if you want high-throughput agents that need big context cheaply. Choose Gemini 3.8 Flash if you want high-throughput agents and Gemini CLI users who want speed and big context.

In our editorial scoring, Gemini 3.8 Flash leads in 2 of five dimensions (output quality and value for money), while Gemini 3.5 Flash leads in 1. On price, Gemini 3.5 Flash runs about $3.75 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; Gemini 3.8 Flash is about $1.65 and proprietary.

Where Gemini 3.5 Flash falls short
  • Below Pro on hard reasoning
  • Occasional verbosity
Full Gemini 3.5 Flash breakdown →
Where Gemini 3.8 Flash falls short
  • Price doubles to $1.50/$7.50 on January 1, 2027
  • Weak on long terminal tasks (19.1% on Terminal-Bench 4.0)
Full Gemini 3.8 Flash breakdown →

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