Gemini 2.0 Flash vs o3-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 20, 2026By LLMversusUpdated June 14, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

Gemini 2.0 Flash is significantly cheaper at $0.10/$0.40 per million tokens vs $1.10/$4.40. o3-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1340 vs 1240. Gemini 2.0 Flash is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 55 tokens/sec. o3-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1310 vs 1260. Gemini 2.0 Flash offers a larger 1049K context window vs 200K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGemini 2.0 Flasho3-mini
ProviderGoogleOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.100$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.400$4.40
Context Window
1.048576M
128K
Max Output Tokens
8,192
65,536
Arena ELO
1,260
1,280
Coding ELO
1,240
1,285
TTFT (ms)
120
350
Tokens/sec
160
25
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionYesNo
When to Use Gemini 2.0 Flash

Choose Gemini 2.0 Flash when you need: extremely fast inference, 1m context window at very low cost, strong multimodal support, great for real-time applications. It excels at chatbots, high-volume, cost-sensitive, multimodal tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two. Its 1049K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Extremely fast inference
  • 1M context window at very low cost
  • Strong multimodal support
  • Great for real-time applications

Best for:

chatbotshigh-volumecost-sensitivemultimodal
When to Use o3-mini

Choose o3-mini when you need: strong mathematical reasoning, good coding performance, affordable reasoning model, large output window. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks.

Strengths:

  • Strong reasoning
  • Good math skills
  • Affordable reasoning

Best for:

reasoningmathgeneral-purpose

Frequently Asked Questions

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