Google: Gemini 3.6 Flash vs OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-02.
| Google: Gemini 3.6 Flash | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | openai | |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 56.1 | 80.2 |
| Input Price | $0.75/M | $2.00/M |
| Output Price | $3.75/M | $10.00/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,050,000 |
| Max Output | 65,536 | 128,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | ✓ | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 56.1 | 77.5 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Gemini 3.6 Flash costs $1.69 and GPT-5.6 Sol costs $4.50, so Gemini 3.6 Flash is about 2.7 times cheaper for the same work.
Both take in a similar amount of text: 1,048,576 and 1,050,000 tokens, about 1,573 and 1,575 pages.
Only Gemini 3.6 Flash offers audio input and video input.
On our blended benchmark score GPT-5.6 Sol leads 80.2 to 56.1.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Gemini 3.6 Flash scores higher on 4 (Code Completion, JSON Extraction, Bulk Data Labeling and others), GPT-5.6 Sol on 16 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Refactoring and others).
Pick Gemini 3.6 Flash if you need lower cost, audio input or video input; pick GPT-5.6 Sol if you need benchmark performance or the stronger all-round task scores.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Google: Gemini 3.6 Flash | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 140 | 142 |
| Code Review | 142 | 146 |
| Code Completion | 132 | 119 |
| Code Refactoring | 145 | 148 |
| Bug Fixing | 146 | 150 |
| Unit Test Generation | 130 | 133 |
| Code Documentation | 136 | 136 |
| Regex Writing | 124 | 125 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 126 | 129 |
| Frontend Component Design | 128 | 131 |
| Data Analysis | 132 | 135 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 135 | 135 |
| ETL Scripting | 135 | 138 |
| JSON Extraction | 131 | 121 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 128 | 118 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 133 | 134 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 133 | 134 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 146 | 149 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 125 | 117 |
| Blog Post Writing | 128 | 130 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →