Nova Lite 1.0 vs Gemini 3 Flash Preview
Updated October 21, 2026. 11 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview has a coding score, 43.7 on the Vibe Coding Index; Nova Lite 1.0 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Nova Lite 1.0 has the edge where output tokens cost 12.5x less.
- Shared results
- 11
- Nova Lite 1.0 only
- 30
- Gemini 3 Flash Preview only
- 58
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Gemini 3 Flash Preview
Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads, 26.3 against 6.7.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview has a GPQA Diamond result, 87.9%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview has a AIME result, 95.6%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview has a MMLU Pro result, 88.6%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview has a Design Arena: websites result, 1196.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Gemini 3 Flash Preview
Gemini 3 Flash Preview takes 1.05M tokens against 300K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Nova Lite 1.0
Nova Lite 1.0 $0.0002, Gemini 3 Flash Preview $0.0020 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview has the number, $0.37.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Nova Lite 1.0 not benchmarked, Gemini 3 Flash Preview 43.7 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Math, 90.0 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- AA Math Index: Nova Lite 1.0 7.0 against Gemini 3 Flash Preview 97.0, 90.0 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Nova Lite 1.0 $0.24 against Gemini 3 Flash Preview $3.00 per million output tokens, 12.5x apart.
- Context window
- Nova Lite 1.0 takes 300K tokens, Gemini 3 Flash Preview 1.05M.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Nova Lite 1.0 | Bars | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 0 | 2 | ||
| Intelligence | 0 | 1 | ||
| Agentic work | 0 | 1 | ||
| Reasoning | 0 | 2 | ||
| Math | 0 | 2 | ||
| Knowledge | 0 | 1 | ||
| General | 0 | 2 | ||
| All shared boards | 0 | 11 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index02
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | Not measured | 75.8% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.6% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 75.0% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 20.2% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | Not measured | 6.4% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 53.9% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 16.7% | 90.8% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 0.8% | 38.6% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| Terminal-Bench | Not measured | 64.3% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| GSO-Bench | Not measured | 9.8% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| WeirdML | Not measured | 61.6% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| ALE-Bench | Not measured | 1367.2 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1239 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1241 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 23 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 6.7 | 26.3 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | Not measured | 1110 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | Not measured | 1063 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | Not measured | 1090 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | Not measured | 1057 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | Not measured | 1161 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | Not measured | 1036 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | Not measured | 42.5% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 11.8% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 18.3% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 26.0% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 17.5% | 80.4% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| BALROG | Not measured | 48.1% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | Not measured | 49.8% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Not measured | $3,635 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 25 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 87.9% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | Not measured | 87.6% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 43.3% | 89.8% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 4.3% | 36.6% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | Not measured | 89.4% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| ARC-AGI | Not measured | 84.7% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Not measured | 33.6% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 61.1% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 39.0% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | Not measured | 26.0% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| VPCT | Not measured | 72.6% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1220 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1201 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1226 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 95.6% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | Not measured | 93.3% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| AA Math Index | 7.0 | 97.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 7.0% | 97.0% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Not measured | 95.6% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 51.2% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | Not measured | 17.1% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| ProofBench | Not measured | 15.0% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1227 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1235 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 88.6% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 86.9% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | Not measured | 55.8% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 66.4% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 73.9% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 68.7% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | Not measured | 95.8% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 55.9% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 59.0% | 89.0% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| SimpleQA Verified | Not measured | 66.8% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| MMLU | 77.0% | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| GeoBench | Not measured | 88.0% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1232 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1213 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1238 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1219 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index4 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | Not measured | 1196 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | Not measured | 1166 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | Not measured | 1184 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | Not measured | 1189 | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 51.8% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 69.9% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Not measured | 52.2% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| IFBench | 34.1% | 78.0% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 19.0% | 78.0% | Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
| DTBench | Not measured | 89.1% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LMCA | Not measured | 43.1% | Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview measured |
| LMArena Text | 1229 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1205 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1197 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Vision | 990 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1243 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1208 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1225 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1229 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1153 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1153 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1238 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1226 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1216 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1199 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1234 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1211 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1176 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 999 | Not measured | Only Nova Lite 1.0 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 21 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Nova Lite 1.0 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Nova Lite 1.0 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Nova Lite 1.0 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Nova Lite 1.0 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Amazon Nova Lite 1.0 | Google Gemini 3 Flash Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Amazon | |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | December 5, 2024 | December 17, 2025 |
| Context window | 300K | 1.05M |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.06 | $0.50 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.24 | $3.00 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | 43.7 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $0.37 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Nova Lite 1.0 better than Gemini 3 Flash Preview for coding?
Only Gemini 3 Flash Preview has a coding score, 43.7 on the Vibe Coding Index; Nova Lite 1.0 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Nova Lite 1.0 has the edge where output tokens cost 12.5x less.
Which is cheaper, Nova Lite 1.0 or Gemini 3 Flash Preview?
Nova Lite 1.0 costs $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.24 per million output tokens; Gemini 3 Flash Preview costs $0.50 and $3.00. Cost per solved task is known for Gemini 3 Flash Preview only.
Which has the bigger context window, Nova Lite 1.0 or Gemini 3 Flash Preview?
Gemini 3 Flash Preview, with 1.05M tokens against 300K.
How many benchmarks is the Nova Lite 1.0 vs Gemini 3 Flash Preview comparison based on?
11 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Nova Lite 1.0's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Gemini 3 Flash Preview's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.