Gemini 3 Flash burned $14 and failed a $1 agent task Pro finished in 85 steps
XIFAQ · reddit · 2026-10-06
A technical writeup compares Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro and the cheaper Gemini 3 Flash on the same agent task. The pricier Pro finished in 85 steps for about $1; Flash ran nearly 1,000 steps, failed, and racked up $14 in token costs.
The author also notes that the same model can consume different token counts on repeat runs, so "cheaper model = cheaper task" doesn't always hold in agentic workflows.
More from coding & agent
- He had Claude build Pokémon-style Korean-learning games, free to play and open source — EstanislaoStan · 2026-10-06
- After 2 years, a dev unveils Aether: a local AI 'OS' with structured memory and FailureMesh recovery — Budget_One_8784 · 2026-10-06
- Why LLMs never pick Java: dev points to under-sampling in training data — HanchungLee · 2026-10-06
- 12 practical Grok Bot use cases: from post-meeting tasks to inbox triage — brandon_galang · 2026-10-06
- StackOverflow survey: 65% of developers use coding agents, yet six in ten avoid AI — pchandrasekar · 2026-10-06
- teenytiny.computer launches cloud Linux VMs built for humans and agents to share — pritisinghhhh · 2026-10-06