Published 3 March 2026

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite

Model Cards are intended to provide essential information on Gemini models, including known limitations, mitigation approaches, and safety performance. Model cards may be updated from time-to-time; for example, to include updated evaluations as the model is improved or revised.

Published: March 2026

Model Information

Description

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is an addition to the Gemini 3 series of highly-capable, natively multimodal, reasoning models. The model is cost-efficient and fast, optimized for high-volume, latency-sensitive tasks like translation and classification.

Model dependencies

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is based on Gemini 3 Pro.

Inputs

Text strings (e.g., a question, a prompt, document(s) to be summarized), images, audio, and video files, with a token context window of up to 1M.

Outputs

Text, with a 64K token output.

Architecture

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is based on Gemini 3 Pro. For more information about the model architecture for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, see the Gemini 3 Pro model card.


Model Data

Training Dataset

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is based on Gemini 3 Pro. For more information about the training dataset for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, see the Gemini 3 Pro model card.

Training Data Processing

For more information about the training data processing for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, see the Gemini 3 Pro model card.


Implementation and Sustainability

Hardware

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite was trained using Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). TPUs are specifically designed to handle the massive computations involved in training LLMs and can speed up training considerably compared to CPUs. TPUs often come with large amounts of high-bandwidth memory, allowing for the handling of large models and batch sizes during training, which can lead to better model quality. TPU Pods (large clusters of TPUs) also provide a scalable solution for handling the growing complexity of large foundation models. Training can be distributed across multiple TPU devices for faster and more efficient processing.

The efficiencies gained through the use of TPUs are aligned with Google's commitment to operate sustainably.

Software

Training was done using JAX and ML Pathways.


Distribution

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is distributed in the following channels; respective documentation shared in line:

Our models are available to downstream providers via an application program interface (API) and subject to relevant terms of use. There is no required hardware or software to use the model. For AI Studio and Gemini API, see the Gemini API Additional Terms of Service; for Vertex AI, see Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service. For more information, see Gemini Model API instructions and Gemini API in Vertex AI quickstart.


Evaluation

Approach

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite was evaluated across a range of benchmarks, including speed, reasoning, multimodal capabilities, factuality, agentic tool use, multi-lingual performance, coding, and long-context. Benchmark details on approach, results, and their methodologies can be found at: deepmind.google/models/evals-methodology/gemini-3-1-flash-lite

Results

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite results as of March, 2026 are below:

Benchmark Notes Gemini 3.1
Flash-Lite High
Gemini 2.5
Flash Dynamic
Gemini 2.5
Flash-Lite Dynamic
GPT-5
mini High
Claude 4.5
Haiku Extended Thinking
Grok 4.1
Fast Reasoning
Input price $/1M tokens, no caching Lower is better $0.25 $0.30 $0.10 $0.25 $1.00 $0.20
Output price $/1M tokens Lower is better $1.50 $2.50 $0.40 $2.00 $5.00 $0.50
Output speed Tokens / s 363 249 366 71 108 145
Humanity’s Last Exam Academic reasoning (full set, text + MM) No tools 16.0% 11.0% 6.9% 16.7% 9.7% 17.6%
GPQA Diamond Scientific knowledge No tools 86.9% 82.8% 66.7% 82.3% 73.0% 84.3%
MMMU-Pro Multimodal understanding and reasoning No tools 76.8% 66.7% 51.0% 74.1% 58.0% 63.0%
CharXiv Reasoning Information synthesis from complex charts 73.2% 63.7% 55.5% 75.5% (+ python) 61.7% 31.6%
Video-MMMU Knowledge acquisition from videos 84.8% 79.2% 60.7% 82.5% 74.6%
SimpleQA Verified Parametric knowledge 43.3% 28.1% 11.5% 9.5% 5.5% 19.5%
FACTS Benchmark Suite Factuality benchmark across grounding, parametric, search, and MM. 40.6% 50.4% 17.9% 33.7% 18.6% 42.1%
MMMLU Multilingual Q&A 88.9% 86.6% 84.5% 84.9% 83.0% 86.8%
LiveCodeBench Code generation (UI: 1/1/2025-5/1/2025) 72.0% 62.6% 34.3% 80.4% 53.2% 76.5%
MRCR v2 (8-needle) Long context performance 128k (average) 60.1% 54.3% 30.6% 52.5% 35.3% 54.6%
1M (pointwise) 12.3% 21.0% 5.4% Not supported Not supported 6.1%

Intended Usage and Limitations

Benefit and Intended Usage

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is well suited for applications that require high volume, cost-efficient and low latency tasks.

Known Limitations

For more information about the known limitations for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, see the Gemini 3 Pro model card.

Acceptable Usage

For more information about the acceptable usage for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, see the Gemini 3 Pro model card.


Ethics and Content Safety

Evaluation Approach

For more information about the evaluation approach for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, see the Gemini 3 Pro model card.

Safety Policies

For more information about the safety policies for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, see the Gemini 3 Pro model card.

Training and Development Evaluation Results

Results for some of the internal safety evaluations conducted during the development phase are listed below. The evaluation results are for automated evaluations and not human evaluation or red teaming. Scores are provided as an absolute percentage increase or decrease in performance compared to the indicated model, as described below. Overall, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite outperforms Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite across both safety and tone, while keeping unjustified refusals low. We mark improvements in green and regressions in red.

Evaluation1 Description Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
vs. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite
Text to Text Safety Automated content safety evaluation measuring safety policies -1.18%
Multilingual Safety Automated safety policy evaluation across multiple languages -1.84%
Image to Text Safety Automated content safety evaluation measuring safety policies -21.7%
Tone2 Automated evaluation measuring objective tone of model refusal +14.59%
Unjustified-refusals Automated evaluation measuring model’s ability to respond to borderline prompts while remaining safe -14.41%

1 The ordering of evaluations in this table has changed from previous iterations of the 2.5 Flash-Lite model card in order to list safety evaluations together and improve readability. The type of evaluations listed have remained the same.

2 For tone and instruction following, a positive percentage increase represents an improvement in the tone of the model on sensitive topics and the model’s ability to follow instructions while remaining safe compared to Gemini 2.5 Pro. We mark improvements in green and regressions in red.

We continue to improve our internal evaluations, including refining automated evaluations to reduce false positives and negatives, as well as update query sets to ensure balance and maintain a high standard of results. The performance results reported below are computed with improved evaluations and thus are not directly comparable with performance results found in previous Gemini model cards.

We expect variation in our automated safety evaluations results, which is why we review flagged content to check for egregious or dangerous material. Our manual review confirmed losses were overwhelmingly either a) false positives or b) not egregious.

Human Red Teaming Results

We conduct manual red teaming by specialist teams who sit outside of the model development team. High-level findings are fed back to the model team. For child safety evaluations, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite satisfied required launch thresholds, which were developed by expert teams to protect children online and meet Google’s commitments to child safety across our models and Google products. For content safety policies generally, including child safety, we saw similar or improved safety performance compared to Gemini 2.5 Flash. Like 3 Pro, the scope of red teaming covered potential issues outside of our strict policies, and found no egregious concerns.

Frontier Safety Assessment

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is part of the Gemini 3 family of models. We rely on our evaluation of Gemini 3.1 Pro with Deep Think mode for Frontier Safety as it is the most generally capable model as of publication of this model card, and it did not reach any Critical Capability Levels (CCLs) outlined in our Frontier Safety Framework. Our assessments have shown that Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is less capable than Gemini 3.1 Pro, therefore based on Gemini 3.1 Pro, we are confident that Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is also unlikely to reach any CCLs. For more information, read the Gemini 3.1 Pro Model Card.

Risks and Mitigations

For more information about the risks and mitigations for Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, see the Gemini 3 Pro model card.

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