Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview
Google · released Mar 3, 2026
- Type
- Proprietary
- Input
- $0.25
- Output
- $1.50
- Cached
- Not published
List price · per 1M tokens · Google AI at 1M context · source ↗
Our take
Written Aug 2, 2026Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview is a lightweight hosted model from Google that handles up to one million tokens in a single request and accepts text, images, files, audio and video. Its strongest measured skill is coding, and the same provider offers a steep discount for workloads that can tolerate slower throughput.
Pick this for long-context multimodal tasks with native audio and video, or budget batch work where slower throughput cuts cost. Good when coding assistance is the priority. Skip it if you need self-hosted deployment, web development coding, or strong creative writing and instruction following.
The case for it
- One-million-token request limit with no smaller variant offered, an extreme reach for a lightweight model.
- Coding is its strongest measured skill, with a 25-point lead over its own general text score.
- Broad multimodal input in a single endpoint: text, images, files, audio and video.
- The same provider charges roughly half the input rate for a 36% speed reduction, a steep discount for patient workloads.
The case against it
- Web development coding lags general coding by over 200 points, a wide gap.
- Creative writing and instruction following both sit below its overall text score.
- Proprietary weights with no licence disclosed, so independent deployment is impossible.
How good is it?
IntelligencePuzzles, maths, exam questions
Arena Text (overall)52nd of 143 · 1432.4
CodingWriting and fixing code on its own
Arena Coding68th of 143 · 1457.4
AgenticPlanning, calling tools, staying on task
Nobody we watch has scored Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview for this. We would take the rating from Arena Agent (IPS).
WritingWe do not rate this
Two boards come close and neither tests writing: Arena Creative Writing asks people which of two replies they prefer, and LiveBench Language tests whether a model understood a passage. So we show where Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview placed and give it no mark out of five.
These tests check whether a model follows instructions — a precondition for all the work above, but not a measure of how well that work is done, which is why they get no rating.
Every published score for this model7 scoresEvery figure we hold, from 7 boards, with who ran it and a link to the source — including the boards no rating above is built on.
Or rent it from someone else
Why this differs from the header. The strip above quotes Google AI's own list price. This is the cheapest live offer at the widest standard context we hold, whoever is serving it — a reseller undercutting a lab is ordinary commerce, not an error.
- per 1M tokens
- $0.25 in / $1.50 out
- Context served
- 1M
- Throughput
- Not measured
| Provider | In / out per 1M tokens | Context | Throughput | Trains on prompts | Logs prompts | Zero retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Studioflex tier | $0.13 / $0.75 | 1M | 101 tok/s | No | Yes55 days | Unknown |
| OpenRouter | $0.25 / $1.50 | 1M | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Google AI | $0.25 / $1.50 | 1M66K out | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Google AI Studio | $0.25 / $1.50 | 1M | 112 tok/s | No | Yes55 days | Unknown |
| Google AI Studiopriority tier | $0.45 / $2.70 | 1M | 106 tok/s | No | Yes55 days | Unknown |
Google AI StudioAcross the 5 listings we hold: 3 say they do not train on prompts, 0 say they do and 2 do not say. 0 appear in the zero-retention registry we check; the rest are unknown to us rather than confirmed either way.
What each host's API supports
From the parameter list each endpoint publishes. Streaming is omitted: nothing we hold reports it, for any model.
- ✓
- Supported
- ✗
- Not supported
- Not published
- host gave no parameter list
| Provider | Tool calling | JSON output | Strict schema |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Studioflex | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| OpenRouter | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google AI | |||
| Google AI Studio | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google AI Studiopriority | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Tool calling: 4 of 5 listings say yes, 1 publishes no parameter list. JSON output: 4 of 5 listings say yes, 1 publishes no parameter list. Strict schema: 4 of 5 listings say yes, 1 publishes no parameter list.
When we formed this view
Dates behind this page
Prices last checked 9d ago
What we do not know about this model yet
- 1 of 5 listings publish no parameter list, so what their API accepts is unknown to us.
- Nothing we hold says whether an endpoint streams, so we do not show it either way.
- 2 of 5 listings do not say whether they train on prompts.
Licence and identifiers
What the licence allowsWe hold no licence record for this model. Inside are the identifiers you need to pull it — its Hugging Face repo where we have one, our slug and a machine-readable card.
Licence
Commercial API terms. We hold no licence record for this model, so there is nothing to summarise here.
Identifiers
- Modality record
- text+image+file+audio+video->text
- Catalogue slug
- google-gemini-3-1-flash-lite-preview