Gemini 3 Flash | TellWorld

What it is

Gemini 3 Flash is a model in Google's Gemini 3 family, positioned as the faster and cheaper option in that generation rather than the largest one.^[1] Google released it on 17 December 2025 in a post by Tulsee Doshi.^[1] Its role was to bring the Gemini 3 generation to the products where latency and price matter most: the consumer app, AI Mode in Search, and the developer tools built around the Gemini API.

Benchmarks

Google reported scores that put the model close to Gemini 3 Pro on several evaluations. It scored 90.4% on GPQA Diamond, a set of expert-written science questions designed to resist simple lookup; 33.7% on Humanity's Last Exam without tools, a broad collection of difficult expert-level questions; and 81.2% on MMMU-Pro, a benchmark for multimodal understanding across images and text.^[1] Google described these results as comparable to Gemini 3 Pro.^[1]

On coding, it scored 78% on SWE-bench Verified, which measures whether a model can resolve real software issues drawn from open repositories. Google said this exceeded both the Gemini 2.5 series and Gemini 3 Pro.^[1]

Speed, token use and price

Google said the model used about 30% fewer tokens on average than Gemini 2.5 Pro on typical traffic and was about 3 times faster, figures it attributed to benchmarking by Artificial Analysis.^[1] Fewer tokens per request matters for cost as well as speed, since API bills are charged per token.

API pricing was set at $0.50 per 1 million input tokens, $1 per 1 million tokens for audio input, and $3 per 1 million output tokens.^[1]^[2] That combination — results in the range of a Pro-tier model at Flash-tier prices — is what the release was built around.

Where it shipped

Gemini 3 Flash replaced Gemini 2.5 Flash as the default model in the Gemini app for all users, and it rolled out as the default in AI Mode in Search.^[1] Making it the default meant that most people using those products would reach the new model without choosing it.

For developers, it was available in preview in the Gemini API under the name gemini-3-flash-preview, and also in Google Antigravity, Gemini CLI, Android Studio, Vertex AI and Gemini Enterprise.^[1]^[3] Google said its API had processed over 1 trillion tokens per day since the Gemini 3 Pro launch.^[1] Named enterprise users of the model included JetBrains, Bridgewater Associates and Figma.^[1]

Later history

The model was succeeded by Gemini 3.5 Flash in May 2026, and Google later recommended gemini-3.6-flash as its replacement.^[3] The Flash line therefore kept its place as the default, faster tier of the Gemini family, with each generation replacing the one before it.

CapabilitiesLarge language models Reasoning Code

ApplicationsConsumer apps

Version history

21

2022
- Apr 4, 2022 PaLM
  PaLM is a 540-billion-parameter dense Transformer language model announced by Google Research in April 2022, trained with the Pathways system across 6,144 TPU v4 chips; it set strong few-shot results on many benchmarks.
2023
- May 10, 2023 PaLM 2
  PaLM 2 is Google's second-generation Pathways language model, announced on 10 May 2023 in four sizes and used across more than 25 Google products, including Bard.
- Dec 6, 2023 Gemini 1.0 (Ultra, Pro, Nano)
  Gemini 1.0 is the first generation of Google DeepMind's multimodal model family, announced on 6 December 2023 in Ultra, Pro and Nano sizes; Google reported its Ultra version as the first model to beat human experts on MMLU.
2024
- Feb 15, 2024 Gemini 1.5 Pro
  A mid-size multimodal model in Google's Gemini 1.5 generation, announced in February 2024, known for a context window that reached one million tokens and later two million.
- May 14, 2024 Gemini 1.5 Flash
  Gemini 1.5 Flash is a lightweight, fast model in Google's Gemini 1.5 family, announced on 14 May 2024 and trained by distillation from 1.5 Pro, with a 1-million-token context window.
- Dec 11, 2024 Gemini 2.0 Flash
  Gemini 2.0 Flash is the first model of Google's Gemini 2.0 generation, released as an experimental model in December 2024 with multimodal output and native tool calling, and made generally available in February 2025.
2025
- Feb 5, 2025 Gemini 2.0 Pro
  An experimental Google model released in February 2025 as part of the Gemini 2.0 family, described by Google as its best yet for coding and complex prompts, with a 2-million-token context window and tool use.
- Mar 25, 2025 Gemini 2.5 Pro
  Gemini 2.5 Pro is Google's first model in the Gemini 2.5 family, released in March 2025 as a "thinking model" with a 1-million-token context window, debuting at number one on LMArena.
- Apr 17, 2025 Gemini 2.5 Flash
  A model in Google's Gemini 2.5 family, released in preview in April 2025 and generally available that June. Google called it its first fully hybrid reasoning model, letting developers turn thinking on or off with a token budget.
- Jun 17, 2025 Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite
  Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is the lowest-cost model in Google's Gemini 2.5 family, built for high-throughput work such as classification and summarisation, with thinking off by default and a controllable thinking budget.
- Nov 18, 2025 Gemini 3 Pro
  Gemini 3 Pro is the first model of Google's Gemini 3 generation, released in preview in November 2025 with a 1-million-token context window and top-ranked results on arena leaderboards and reasoning, coding and multimodal benchmarks.
- Dec 17, 2025 Gemini 3 Flash · This page
  Gemini 3 Flash is a fast, lower-cost model in Google's Gemini 3 family, released on 17 December 2025. It scored close to Gemini 3 Pro on several benchmarks while using fewer tokens and costing far less per token.
2026
- Feb 19, 2026 Gemini 3.1 Pro
  Gemini 3.1 Pro is Google's preview upgrade to Gemini 3 Pro, released on 19 February 2026, scoring a verified 77.1% on ARC-AGI-2 and shipped through the Gemini API, the Gemini app and NotebookLM.
- Mar 3, 2026 Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
  Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is a low-cost, low-latency multimodal model in Google's Gemini 3 family, released in preview in March 2026 and generally available from May 2026 for high-frequency, lightweight tasks.
- May 19, 2026 Gemini 3.5 Flash
  Gemini 3.5 Flash is Google's first Gemini 3.5 model, announced on 19 May 2026 and built for agentic and coding work; it became the default model in the Gemini app and in AI Mode in Search.
- Jul 21, 2026 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
  The fastest model in Google's Gemini 3.5 series, released in July 2026 for high-throughput agentic work, and slated to replace gemini-3.1-flash-lite and take over traffic from gemini-2.5-flash.
- Jul 21, 2026 Gemini 3.6 Flash
  Gemini 3.6 Flash is the Gemini model Google released on 21 July 2026 and called its workhorse: better coding, knowledge work and multimodal results than 3.5 Flash, fewer output tokens, built-in computer use and tiered pricing.
- Aug 13, 2026 Gemini 3.7 Flash
  A Google model released on 13 August 2026 as its most intelligent workhorse for coding and agents, priced with a scheduled increase and superseded three weeks later by 3.8 Flash.
- Sep 2, 2026 Gemini 3.8 Flash
  Gemini 3.8 Flash is Google's fast, low-cost model released on 2 September 2026, alongside a cybersecurity variant, Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, with introductory pricing that doubles at the start of 2027.
- Oct 13, 2026 Gemini 4 Argon
  Gemini 4 Argon is the first model in Google's Gemini 4 family, announced on 30 September 2026 and made generally available on 13 October 2026, built for long multi-step work and shipped with a one-million-token output limit.
- Oct 28, 2026 Gemini 4 Carbon
  Gemini 4 Carbon is a Google DeepMind frontier model announced on 28 October 2026, two weeks after Gemini 4 Argon, with Google claiming state-of-the-art cybersecurity and long-horizon capabilities.

20251

Dec 17, 2025
ReleaseGoogle releases Gemini 3 Flash
On 17 December 2025 Google released Gemini 3 Flash, a speed-oriented model that became the default in the Gemini app, with published scores of 90.4% on GPQA Diamond and 78% on SWE-bench Verified.

Notes and sources

Gemini 3 Flash: frontier intelligence built for speedhttps://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-3-flash/
Gemini Developer API pricinghttps://aistudio.google.com/docs/pricing
Gemini API: Deprecationshttps://aistudio.google.com/docs/deprecations

Cite this page: Gemini 3 Flash. TellWorld, https://www.tellworld.net/models/gemini-3-flash. Updated 2026-11-08

What it is

Benchmarks

Speed, token use and price

Where it shipped

Later history

Version history

20251

Developed by1

Succeeded by1

Successor of1

Powers3

Uses2

Notes and sources