The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash ·DeepSeek vs Google

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash — head-to-head comparison

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 profile Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash profile All comparisons
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 — DeepSeek
Quality
#44 of 61
44based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#280 of 316
20.9
Output tokens per second
Price
#105 of 340
$0.35
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.20 · Out $0.80
Cache hit price
#10 of 206
$0.003
per 1M tokens (−99%)
Context
#225 of 345
164k
tokens (~300 pages)
Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash — Google
Quality
#3 of 61
95based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#31 of 316
119.0
Output tokens per second
Price
#257 of 340
$3.38
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.50 · Out $9.00
Cache hit price
#127 of 206
$0.15
per 1M tokens (−90%)
Context
#46 of 345
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 scores 44 and Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash scores 95 — a 51-point lead for Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash. They share 2 published evaluations, with DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 ahead on 0 and Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash ahead on 2.

Blended pricing is $0.35 per 1M tokens for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and $3.38 for Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is about 9.6× cheaper.

Throughput is 21 tokens per second for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and 119 for Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash, with time to first token at 1.1s and 1.7s. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 accepts 164k tokens of context against 1.05M.

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is open weights under Open weights (restricted use); Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash is proprietary. 5 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 25 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash
Known Good Index 44 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 95 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $0.35 $3.38
Output tok/s 21 119
Context window 164k 1.05M
Providers 3 2
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

IndicesComponents
Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash
Known Good Index 44 95
Mathematics Index 40 96
Science Index 53 98
Reasoning Index 52 —
Agentic Index — 92
Openness Index 60 5
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 · marker = Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond57 / 93
MATH / AIME16 / 96

Right-hand figures read DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 / Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 leads on 0 of 2, Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash on 2.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash
Text Arena 1,333 —
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,358 —
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Per token typeCache discount
Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash
Input $/1M $0.20 $1.50
Output $/1M $0.80 $9.00
Blended $/1M $0.35 $3.38
Cache read $/1M $0.003 $0.150
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash
Context window 164k 1.05M
Max output tokens 16k 66k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Median throughput and time to first token across hosting providers

Output speedTime to first token
Throughput and latency

Medians across all tracked providers, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash
Output tokens/s 21 119
Time to first token 1.1s 1.7s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

5 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 blendedDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 tok/s Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash blendedGoogle: Gemini 3.5 Flash tok/s
StreamLake $0.35 24 — —
DeepInfra $0.46 20 — —
Novita $0.62 14 — —
Google AI Studio — — $1.69 205
Google · first party — — $1.69 121

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →