Roboflow

Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash

Compare Gemini 3.6 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash side-by-side. See how these vision models stack up in Open Prompt, Classification, Image Captioning, OCR, and Object Detection.

Compare Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash live

Run the same image across every model that supports a task and compare their outputs side-by-side.

Detect and compare bounding boxes across models on the same image.

Open Object Detection in the full playground
GoogleGemini 3.6 Flash
Run to compare this model.
GoogleGemini 3.8 Flash
Run to compare this model.

Models in this comparison

Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash on Vision Evals

Gemini 3.6 Flash scores higher on 3 of the six Vision Evals tasks.

The widest gap is Object Detection, where Gemini 3.8 Flash leads 68.1% to 57.1%.

Overall, Gemini 3.6 Flash averages 83.0% (#6 of 36) against 85.1% (#3 of 36) for Gemini 3.8 Flash.

Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper ($0.0032 vs $0.0033 per sample), while Gemini 3.8 Flash is faster (11.6s vs 14.7s per sample).

Gemini 3.6 FlashGemini 3.8 Flash

Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash Comparison Table

Evals updated September 2, 2026Pricing updated September 2, 2026

PropertyGemini 3.6 FlashGemini 3.8 Flash
OrganizationGoogleGoogle
Categoryclosedclosed
Modalitymultimodalmultimodal
Release DateJul 2026Sep 2026
Context Window1.0M1.0M
Parameters
LicenseProprietaryProprietary
Pricing per 1M tokens
Input $/1M$0.750
Output $/1M$3.75
Vision Tasks
CaptioningDemoDemo
Chart Question Answering
ClassificationDemoDemo
Document Question Answering
Image Tagging
Multi-Label Classification
Object DetectionDemoDemo
OCRDemoDemo
Vision Language
Visual Question AnsweringDemoDemo
Video Classification
Model Features
Foundation Vision
LLMs with Vision Capabilities
Multimodal Vision
Vision Evalsground-truth scores across 6 vision tasks, pooled at low effort
Overall
83.0%
85.1%
Avg cost / sample$0.0032$0.0033
Avg speed / sample14.66s11.65s
By task
Object Detection (low)
57.1%
±1.7, Mean of 3 runs, range 55.9 to 59.4
$0.0041
68.1%
±0.8, Mean of 3 runs, range 67.3 to 69.0
$0.0041
Object Detection (high)
70.7%
±0.4, Mean of 3 runs, range 70.3 to 71.2
$0.0093
74.8%
±1.1, Mean of 3 runs, range 73.4 to 75.6
$0.021
Counting (low)
80.2%
±2.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 78.4 to 82.4
$0.0034
78.8%
±2.7, Mean of 3 runs, range 75.7 to 81.1
$0.0036
Counting (high)
79.3%
±2.7, Mean of 3 runs, range 77.0 to 82.4
$0.0089
79.3%
±1.4, Mean of 3 runs, range 78.4 to 81.1
$0.024
Identification (low)
99.0%
±1.6, Mean of 3 runs, range 96.9 to 100.0
$0.0015
97.9%
±1.6, Mean of 3 runs, range 96.9 to 100.0
$0.0014
Identification (high)
100.0%
±0.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 100.0 to 100.0
$0.0033
96.9%
±0.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 96.9 to 96.9
$0.0034
OCR (low)
88.2%
±0.3, Mean of 3 runs, range 87.9 to 88.4
$0.0028
87.3%
±0.8, Mean of 3 runs, range 86.5 to 88.2
$0.0024
OCR (high)
89.5%
±0.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 89.5 to 89.6
$0.017
88.8%
±0.7, Mean of 3 runs, range 88.0 to 89.4
$0.064
Data Extraction (low)
95.9%
±1.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 94.8 to 96.9
$0.0015
97.3%
±0.5, Mean of 3 runs, range 96.9 to 97.9
$0.0018
Data Extraction (high)
94.8%
±1.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 93.8 to 95.9
$0.0032
94.8%
±1.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 93.8 to 95.9
$0.0089
Reasoning (low)
77.7%
±2.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 76.2 to 80.1
$0.0031
81.2%
±0.3, Mean of 3 runs, range 80.8 to 81.5
$0.0034
Reasoning (high)
81.0%
±2.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 79.5 to 83.4
$0.0091
84.5%
±1.0, Mean of 3 runs, range 83.4 to 85.4
$0.021

Gemini 3.6 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash: Overview

Gemini 3.6 Flash

Gemini 3.6 Flash is a multimodal language model from Google DeepMind, positioned as the workhorse tier in the Gemini 3.x family. It accepts text, image, video, audio, and PDF inputs with a 1 million token context window and produces up to 64,000 output tokens. The model builds directly on Gemini 3.5 Flash, incorporating developer and customer feedback to improve token efficiency, coding quality, and knowledge work performance. According to the Artificial Analysis Index, it consumes 17% fewer output tokens than its predecessor, and on some benchmarks such as DeepSWE, token reduction reaches up to 65%. It supports function calling, structured output, search as a tool, and code execution, and includes computer use as a built-in capability in the Gemini API and Gemini Enterprise.

On coding benchmarks, Gemini 3.6 Flash scores 49% on DeepSWE versus 37% for 3.5 Flash, and 63.9% on MLE Bench versus 49.7%. Computer use performance on OSWorld-Verified improves from 78.4% to 83%, and knowledge work scores on GDPval-AA v2 rise from 1349 to 1421. The model carries a knowledge cutoff of March 2026 and ships with enhanced Frontier Safety safeguards covering chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cyber offense domains, with training to minimize refusals for beneficial uses. It is a proprietary, closed-weights model available in preview through the Gemini API via Google AI Studio, Android Studio, Google Antigravity, Gemini Enterprise, and the Gemini app.

Gemini 3.8 Flash

Gemini 3.8 Flash is a natively multimodal reasoning model in Google's Gemini 3 series, positioned as the speed and cost oriented Flash tier while targeting long-horizon software engineering, autonomous agents, and enterprise workflows. It accepts text, images, video, audio, and PDF documents in a single request and returns text, with an input limit of 1,048,576 tokens and an output limit of 65,536 tokens. Thinking is configurable at low, medium, and high levels, and the model supports function calling, code execution, structured outputs, context caching, search and Maps grounding, file search, and computer use in preview. Image generation, audio generation, and the Live API are not supported.

On vision oriented evaluations the model reports 86.2% on CharXiv Reasoning for chart and figure synthesis and 87.8% on LVBench for long video understanding in agentic mode, alongside 90.8% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 and 61.6% on SWE-Bench Pro for coding. Following Gemini API conventions, it can localize objects by emitting bounding boxes as [ymin, xmin, ymax, xmax] integers normalized to a 0 to 1000 range, which supports prompt driven detection and grounding in addition to captioning, document parsing, and visual question answering. The knowledge cutoff is March 2026, though coverage in some domains reflects the January 2025 cutoff shared across the Gemini 3 family.

Frequently Asked Questions

On Roboflow's Vision Evals, Gemini 3.8 Flash performed slightly better overall. The two split the six vision tasks 3 to 3, but Gemini 3.8 Flash averages 85.1% (#3 of 36) against 83.0% (#6 of 36) for Gemini 3.6 Flash. These scores measure vision capabilities only; either model may perform differently on work outside this benchmark's tasks.

No. On the Vision Evals Object Detection benchmark at low effort, Gemini 3.8 Flash leads with 68.1% against 57.1%. This is the widest gap between the two models across the benchmark's tasks.

Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper to run. Across Roboflow's Vision Evals task mix it averaged $0.0032 per sample against $0.0033. Actual costs depend on your image sizes, prompts, and output length.

Gemini 3.8 Flash is faster. Across Roboflow's Vision Evals it averaged 11.6s per inference against 14.7s. Latency varies with image size, prompt length, and provider load, so treat these as relative rather than guaranteed figures.

Yes. The comparison demo on this page runs both models on the same image side by side for open prompts and image classification in the free Roboflow Playground. You can try it instantly, and a free account unlocks unlimited runs.