💰 Unit Cost Winner Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite $0.075/1M in · $0.30/1M out
⚡ Latency & Speed Winner Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 78ms TTFT · 265 tok/s
💻 Coding (SWE) Winner GPT-5 74.9% SWE-bench · 95.8% HumanEval
🧠 STEM Reasoning Winner GPT-5 85.4% GPQA · 98% MATH-500

Which model is better: Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or GPT-5?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 97.0% cheaper for input tokens ($0.07 vs. $2.50 per 1M tokens) and $0.30 vs. $10.00 for output tokens (33.3x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite delivers lower response latency at 78ms TTFT (262ms faster than GPT-5) with 265 vs. 105 tok/s throughput. GPT-5 leads coding evaluations at 74.9% SWE-bench Verified vs. 55.4% for Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and 85.4% vs. 68.4% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.

Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)

Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.

Metric / Dimension Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite GPT-5 Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $0.07 $2.50 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 33.3x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $0.30 $10.00 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (97.0% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $0.015 $0.625 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 41.7x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $0.07 $2.50 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is 33.3x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output) 1,049k (33k out) 410k (128k out) Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (2.6x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency 78ms 340ms Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (262ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput) 265 tok/s 105 tok/s Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+160 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 55.4% 74.9% GPT-5 (+19.5% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM) 68.4% 85.4% GPT-5 (+17.0% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline) 80.1% 90.8% GPT-5 (+10.7% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic) 90.2% 98% GPT-5 (+7.8% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 81.5 / 100 59.2 / 100 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (+22.3 pts)

Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster

Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.

25.0M Tokens
500K 50M 250M 500M+
5.0M Tokens
100K 25M 75M 150M+
50% Cached
0% (Uncached) 25% 50% (Typical Agent) 95% Max

Estimated Monthly Spend

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite $2.63

$0.07/1M in · $0.30/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.015/1M read · $0.07/1M write

GPT-5 $89.06

$2.50/1M in · $10.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.625/1M read · $2.50/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$86.44 / mo
(97.1% lower cost with Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite)
Open Full Matchup Analysis →
A

When to Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite

Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google) for high-frequency data pipelines, real-time routing, large-scale document tagging, and ultra-low-cost conversational assistants — offering a 1,048k context window, 78ms TTFT, and $0.07/1M input pricing ($0.015/1M cached reads).

B

When to Choose GPT-5

Choose GPT-5 (OpenAI) for complex enterprise automation, full-stack software engineering, multimodal agent orchestration, and scientific synthesis — offering a 409k context window, 340ms TTFT, and $2.50/1M input pricing ($0.625/1M cached reads).

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or GPT-5?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper at $0.075/1M input tokens ($0.30/1M output) compared to $2.50/1M input ($10.00/1M output) for GPT-5.

Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or GPT-5?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite delivers faster first-token latency at 78ms TTFT (265 tok/s throughput) compared to 340ms TTFT (105 tok/s) for GPT-5.

How do Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and GPT-5 compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?

On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite scores 55.4% versus 74.9% for GPT-5. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite scores 68.4% versus 85.4% for GPT-5 (and 90.2% vs 98% on MATH-500).

When should you choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite?

Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google) for high-frequency data pipelines, real-time routing, large-scale document tagging, and ultra-low-cost conversational assistants — offering a 1,048k context window, 78ms TTFT, and $0.07/1M input pricing ($0.015/1M cached reads).

When should you choose GPT-5?

Choose GPT-5 (OpenAI) for complex enterprise automation, full-stack software engineering, multimodal agent orchestration, and scientific synthesis — offering a 409k context window, 340ms TTFT, and $2.50/1M input pricing ($0.625/1M cached reads).

Explore High-Priority Related Model Matchups