Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber • Hacker News Board

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#81

Post by ErneX » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #51

kthinckley wrote: post #48

Google desperately needs to make some leadership changes within their Gemini team now that they've been surpassed by 3-5 open weight models and risk loosing frontier status all together in the near future.

Open weight models aren't likely to be open weight in the long-term. China has started considering export controlling and limiting access to model weights [0]. [0] - https://www.ft.com/content/6049a031-9e9b-464c-97bb-414da04d5...

That contradicts this:

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chinas-xi-touts-open-source-ai-a...

So who even knows.

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#82

Post by wmedrano » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

ConfusedDog wrote: post #17

Why would 3.6 flash perform a little worse than 3.5 flash on Artificial Analysis Coding Index... https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gemini-3-6-flash?intell...

Could be a good tradeoff for the flash model though. 3.5 -> 3.6 is a tiny bit cheaper and maybe faster?

artificialanalysis.ai has it going from 165 tps -> 304 tps. openrouter.ai needs more data but it has it going from ~100 tps -> ~150 tps, though at peak 3.5 has reached 156tps.

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#83

Post by dumberquestions » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

semilin wrote: post #50

dumberquestions wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, should've gotten some LLM to summarize it instead of skimming.

Or you could have read it more closely before posting a comment saying it didn't make sense. You know, the old school way.

If I'm going to read it wrong might as well have an LLM to blame.

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#84

Post by metahost » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

So about the same “intelligence” as Muse Spark 1.1 but 2x faster and about 2x as expensive.

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#85

Post by tomrod » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

rednb wrote: post #79

simonw wrote: post #71

Pelicans for 3.6 Flash and 3.5 Flash-Lite (Cyber isn't available to me through the API yet.) https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer#url=ht...

I am growing tired of these pelicans posts every time a new model is published. Feels to me like low effort personal brand promotion. Just sharing my 2 cents.

Its a nice benchmark. Like hearing the ice cream truck on a summer day.

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#86

Post by hagen8 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

swe_dima wrote: post #69

It's scary relying on Google's models. I have a very price sensitive workload that used to run on flash 2.5 lite - it's deprecated now. The replacement 3.1 flash lite is a lot more expensive, but now also has a sunset date. 3.5 flash lite is even more expensive. So the price is rising and you have no choice but to keep paying more and more.

Just switch the model, its not that much effort tbh. And u can also get a cheaper model than 2.5 lite for the same intelligence

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#87

Post by SwellJoe » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

primaprashant wrote: post #25

Pricing per million input/output tokens: 2.5 Flash: $0.3 / $2.5 3.0 Flash: $0.5 / $3 3.5 Flash: $1.5 / $9 3.6 Flash: $1.5 / $7.5 --- 2.5 Flash-Lite: $0.1 / $0.4 3.1 Flash-Lite: $0.25 / $1.5 3.5 Flash-Lite: $0.3 / $2.5

3.5 Flash was always too expensive for a "flash" model. They marketed it as "near frontier" level, but there are several order-of-magnitude cheaper open models that compete with it.

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#88

Post by lopatin » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

m_w_ wrote: post #13

It's a bit disheartening to see no comparison to other models here - and I'm not sure this pushes the curve anywhere. 3.6 flash is more expensive than GLM 5.2 - but seemingly worse, although this post is really light (lite?) on details. It seemed for a time that Google had finally gotten the ball rolling, but I'm doubting that more and more as time passes. We'll see what happens with 3.5 pro I suppose.

[dead]

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#89

Post by armarr » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

m_w_ wrote: post #13

It's a bit disheartening to see no comparison to other models here - and I'm not sure this pushes the curve anywhere. 3.6 flash is more expensive than GLM 5.2 - but seemingly worse, although this post is really light (lite?) on details. It seemed for a time that Google had finally gotten the ball rolling, but I'm doubting that more and more as time passes. We'll see what happens with 3.5 pro I suppose.

GLM was twice as verbose running the Artificial Analysis benchmark. So it ends up being more expensive

Re: Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

#90

Post by stonewhite » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

Google somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of success with their AI products.

They literally forced me and my company out of Antigravity by phasing out AI Ultra subscription without any proper product follow-up. Antigravity IDE cannot even have poweruser subscriptions now from Google Workspace an Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform cannot be attached to Antigravity IDE.

Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform has an incredibly abysmal setup process, and if I want to limit spending per-user I have to create projects per user. The fact that you cannot activate Anthropic models on it if the billing still has free credits is almost a joke.

I was a big proponent of Google and Gemini, but they left us reeling with their abrupt product decisions. Forced us to buy $200 subscriptions directly from Anthropic/OpenAI.