Gemini 3.7 Flash wins on coding (89 vs 84) and writing quality. Qwen 3.8 Flash wins on price ($0.16 vs $0.75/1M input). For most workflows, Gemini 3.7 Flash is the stronger default — 80.8% swe-bench verified at introductory flash pricing.
The shortest way to see the safest default, the lower-cost option, and the specialist pick before you read deeper.
Gemini 3.7 Flash is the safest overall answer here when you want the strongest default instead of the lowest list price.
Mistral: Mistral Nemo is the lower-cost option to start with when you still need useful output at scale.
Qwen 3.8 Flash is the better pick when response speed matters more than maximum reasoning depth.
Gemini 3.7 Flash leads on coding with a score of 89 vs 84 for Qwen 3.8 Flash.
Gemini 3.7 Flash has the larger context window: 1.048576M vs 991K for Qwen 3.8 Flash.
Qwen 3.8 Flash is cheaper at $0.16/1M input tokens vs $0.75/1M for Gemini 3.7 Flash.
Choose Gemini 3.7 Flash for high-volume coding and long-context work at introductory Flash pricing. Its coding and reasoning scores are what carry the recommendation here.
Qwen 3.8 Flash earns its place when your work is mostly cheap high-throughput coding and reasoning, even though it loses the overall count here.
Qwen 3.8 Flash is the more cost-efficient option at $0.16/1M input — Gemini 3.7 Flash costs 5x more per input token, so the gap is worth taking seriously wherever token volume rather than peak quality drives the bill.
Switch the scoring lens to see whether the top answer changes when you care more about cost, speed, or long-document work.
Google / Balanced / Aug 27, 2026
80.8% SWE-bench Verified at introductory Flash pricing.
Ranks models by the broadest mix of coding, writing, research, and long-context usefulness.
You are planning 2027 spend and need price certainty — the introductory rate expires December 31, 2026.
The fastest way to see where the recommendation shifts when your priority changes.
80.8% SWE-bench Verified at introductory Flash pricing.
SWE-bench Pro 62.5 at sixteen cents per million input.
Every figure below is the provider's list price or a published capability score — the same numbers the recommendation on this page is built from.
| Model | Input | Output | Est. month | Context | Speed | Coding | Writing | Research |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.7 FlashGoogle | $0.75/1M | $3.75/1M | $15 | 1.0M tokens | Fast | 89 | 82 | 85 |
| Qwen 3.8 FlashAlibaba | $0.16/1M | $0.47/1M | $2.54 | 991k tokens | Very fast | 84 | 76 | 78 |
Capability scores are out of 100 and reflect our own weighting of published benchmarks and production signals — see how we evaluate models. “Est. month” assumes 10M input and 2M output tokens at list price, with no batch or caching discounts applied, so treat it as a ceiling.
What each one is genuinely good at, where it falls down, and the situations we would steer you away from it — not just the headline score.
Google's fastest-moving coding workhorse — 80.8% on SWE-bench Verified at half the price of Gemini 3.6 Flash, shipped just three weeks after it.
You are planning 2027 spend and need price certainty — the introductory rate expires December 31, 2026.
The best coding score per dollar in Google's lineup right now — 80.8% SWE-bench Verified at $0.75/1M input. Budget on the post-January 2027 price of $1.50/$7.50 if you are signing anything long-term.
Released August 13, 2026, only three weeks after Gemini 3.6 Flash. Introductory pricing of $0.75/$3.75 runs through December 31, 2026; on January 1, 2027 it doubles to $1.50/$7.50, which is exactly Gemini 3.6 Flash's rate.
Alibaba's preview of the Qwen4 architecture — 125B parameters with only 6B active per token, at sixteen cents per million input.
You need Alibaba's maximum capability — that is Qwen 3.8 Max — or a SWE-bench Verified number.
One of the best coding-score-per-dollar picks in the catalog. Route volume work here and reserve Qwen 3.8 Max or a frontier model for the hard cases.
Released August 26, 2026. The open-weight release is Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, a preview of the Qwen4 architecture: 125B mixture-of-experts with 6B active per token, a 51B n-gram embedding table and a 4B multi-token prediction layer. Qwen 3.8 Flash is the production API version on Qwen Cloud at $0.16/$0.47.
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Gemini 3.7 Flash wins on more of the categories we score — coding, reasoning, long context — so it is the better default of the two. Qwen 3.8 Flash is the better pick when your work is mostly cheap high-throughput coding and reasoning. Neither is universally "better": Gemini 3.7 Flash is aimed at high-volume coding and long-context work at introductory Flash pricing, Qwen 3.8 Flash at cheap high-throughput coding and reasoning.
Qwen 3.8 Flash is cheaper at $0.16/1M input and $0.47/1M output. Gemini 3.7 Flash costs $0.75/1M input and $3.75/1M output.
Gemini 3.7 Flash has the larger context window at 1.048576M tokens vs Qwen 3.8 Flash's 991K. For large document analysis, Gemini 3.7 Flash is the stronger pick.
Gemini 3.7 Flash is better for coding with a score of 89 vs Qwen 3.8 Flash's 84 (out of 100). Claude Fable 5 is the overall coding leader in this directory at 100/100.
Qwen 3.8 Flash is faster with a very fast speed rating (score: 5) vs Gemini 3.7 Flash's fast rating (score: 4). Speed matters most for interactive and high-throughput work; for batch jobs the Gemini 3.7 Flash latency penalty is usually invisible.
The $0.75/$3.75 launch price is introductory — it doubles to $1.50/$7.50 on January 1, 2027. Still short of Claude Opus 5 (96%) and GPT-5.6 Sol (96.2%) on SWE-bench Verified for the hardest coding work. Avoid it if you are planning 2027 spend and need price certainty — the introductory rate expires December 31, 2026. That is the main case for looking at Qwen 3.8 Flash instead.
No published SWE-bench Verified score, only SWE-bench Pro. An architecture preview rather than a settled flagship — Qwen 3.8 Max remains Alibaba's top-end model. Avoid it if you need Alibaba's maximum capability — that is Qwen 3.8 Max — or a SWE-bench Verified number. Against Gemini 3.7 Flash specifically, the gap shows up most on coding (89 vs 84).
Take a moderate workload of 10M input and 2M output tokens a month. Gemini 3.7 Flash runs $15.00 (at $0.75/1M in and $3.75/1M out); Qwen 3.8 Flash runs $2.54 (at $0.16/1M in and $0.47/1M out). That is a $12.46/month difference — Qwen 3.8 Flash is the cheaper of the two at this volume, and the gap scales linearly as you send more. Output tokens dominate the bill on both, so prompt length matters far less than response length.
Yes, and for most teams that beats picking one. A common split is Gemini 3.7 Flash for high-volume coding and long-context work at introductory Flash pricing, with Qwen 3.8 Flash handling cheap high-throughput coding and reasoning. Routing high-volume, low-stakes calls to Qwen 3.8 Flash at $0.16/1M and reserving Gemini 3.7 Flash for the hard cases is usually the cheapest arrangement that does not cost you quality.