Skip to content
Back to the index
41Small and fastProvisional score

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite

Gemini Flash-Lite

The cheapest way to put a competent Google model in front of real traffic.

Updated

Gemini Flash-Lite

The read

Flash-Lite is built for the jobs measured in millions of calls rather than in cleverness: classification, tagging, extraction, moderation, first-pass summarising. It is quick, it is multimodal, and the price is low enough that the model stops being the line item you worry about. Ask it to reason and it will try, but this is not the tier to ask.

Where it shines

  • One of the cheapest capable models available anywhere
  • Low enough latency to run inside a page request
  • Still handles images, which most models at this price do not

Worth knowing first

  • Reasoning is shallow, and it fails quietly rather than loudly
  • A generation behind the current Flash line

Index score

75.2

Provisional. This score is read from the product's public capability, not from the one-prompt rebuild the fully reviewed entries went through, so treat it as a placing rather than a verdict.

Craft66
Speed94
Control74
Value92
Rank
41 of 53
Builds
LLMs
Category
Small and fast
Output
Text and images in, text out
Pricing
Free tier
Best for
Very high-volume classification and extraction

Scores are our own editorial judgement, weighted craft 55, speed 10, control 15 and value 20.