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Gemini 3.8 Flash and GPT-6 Astra Both Finish the Same Prompt in Under Two Minutes

September 7, 2026 at 17:38 EDT

Foundation Models
AI Agents
Software Dev & Coding

Google's Gemini 3.8 Flash and OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra both completed the same prompt in less than two minutes in a side-by-side run, showing how little wall-clock time now separates a Flash-tier workhorse from a frontier flagship on short agentic jobs — even as list prices and harder scores still diverge.

Sep 7, 2026 · Google · OpenAI

Same prompt. Sub-two-minute finishes.

Gemini 3.8 Flash and GPT-6 Astra both completed an identical prompt in less than two minutes, days after launching into the same crowded frontier week. Speed is no longer the split. Price and harder scores still are.

Magnitude · input list price

Astra costs about 13x more per input token

$0.75

Gemini 3.8 Flash
per 1M input

$10.00

GPT-6 Astra
per 1M input · ~13x

One block equals the Flash input rate. Astra's column is 13 stacked blocks.

<2 min

Both models finished the same prompt

73.8 / 74.1

DeepSWE v1.1 · Flash vs Astra, nearly tied

19.1% vs 57.9%

Terminal-Bench 4.0 · the score that still splits them

Comparison · Terminal-Bench 4.0

Same clock. Not the same coding board.

19.1%

Gemini 3.8 Flash

57.9%

GPT-6 Astra · ~3x

Two blocks versus six: Terminal-Bench 4.0 is about a 3-to-1 lead for Astra, even when short prompts finish in under two minutes on both.

What holds up

Flash keeps pace on the clock and on DeepSWE, at a list price that is still a Flash bargain through year-end. Short agentic jobs no longer need a flagship just to finish.

What still bites

Output quality, harness, and quota still decide the winner. Harder terminal scores favor Astra, Flash can burn extra tokens at high effort, and Astra usage can drain in minutes.

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