Gemini 3.5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Gemini 3.5 is meaningfully stronger at speed (90 vs 60 on our capability index).
- •Gemini 3.5 is 70% cheaper on input tokens, which compounds fast on high-volume or agentic workloads.
Specs comparison
| Gemini 3.5 | GPT-5.6 Sol | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google DeepMind | OpenAI |
| Type | Closed source | Closed source |
| Context window | ✓1,048,576 tokens (Gemini 3.5 Flash; Pro variant not yet released) | Not announced |
| Input / 1M tokens | ✓$1.50 | $5.00 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $9.00 | $30.00 |
| Release date | 2026-05 | 2026-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 | GPT-5.6 Sol |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (coding) | 76.2% | - |
| MCP Atlas (tool use) | 83.6% | - |
| CharXiv Reasoning (multimodal) | 84.2% | - |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | - | 88.8% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Ultra) | - | 91.9% |
| ExploitBench | - | competitive with Mythos Preview |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts and independent benchmark aggregators.
Which should you choose?
Choose Gemini 3.5 if...
- →You need frontier agent/coding performance without frontier prices
- →Building autonomous agents that make many tool calls
- →High-throughput production workloads that were previously too costly on a Pro model
- →You want a strong default multimodal model with a 1M-token context window
Choose GPT-5.6 Sol if...
- →You are an approved preview partner needing the most capable model for agentic software engineering
- →Complex multi-step tasks that benefit from subagent orchestration (Ultra) or maximum reasoning depth (max)
- →Frontier scientific research, professional knowledge work, or security-sensitive workloads