Gemini 3 Flash is now available in Gemini CLI

Gemini 3 Flash is now available in Gemini CLI, supporting high-frequency workflows common to terminal-based work. Gemini 3 Flash achieves a SWE-bench Verified score of 78% for agentic coding, outperforming not only the 2.5 series, but also Gemini 3 Pro. Gemini 3 Flash was built to be highly efficient, pushing the Pareto frontier of quality vs. cost and speed and is available in preview at less than a quarter the cost of Gemini 3 Pro. With two of our best models powering Gemini CLI, speed no longer has to mean compromising quality.

Start using Gemini 3 Flash with Gemini CLI

Starting today, most paid tier customers of Gemini CLI have access to both Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash, including:

All non-business customers of Google AI Pro or AI Ultra
Users who have access using a paid API key through Google AI or Vertex
Gemini Code Assist users that have been enabled by their cloud admin for preview models

For free tier users:

If you were not on our waitlist, we’re rolling out additional access gradually to ensure the experience remains fast and reliable, so stay tuned for more details, or view our docs to learn about your options for access now

Get started by upgrading Gemini CLI version to the latest version (0.21.1):

This release brings the full capabilities of the Gemini 3 family to your terminal. You can rely on Gemini CLI’s intelligent auto-routing to reserve Gemini 3 Pro for highly complex reasoning, or use the manual selector to dedicate a specific model to all of your tasks. The significant reasoning improvements in Gemini 3 Flash allow you to execute prompts that previously required slower Pro-tier models, at a lower cost.
Build anything in the terminal with improved agentic coding

Gemini 3 Flash raises the performance floor of your coding sessions with strong performance in reasoning, tool use, and multimodal capabilities.

Generate a ready-to-deploy app with 3D graphics

We used Gemini 3 Pro in Gemini CLI to build a 3D Voxel simulation of the Golden Gate Bridge, treating the prompt as both a creative brief and a technical specification. But can Gemini 3 Flash do the same?

Previously, generating this level of functional code in a single pass was a job more suited for Pro models. Gemini 2.5 Flash, for example, often struggled with this complexity, resulting in broken logic. While Gemini 3 Pro’s state-of-the-art reasoning creates a more visually appealing result, Gemini 3 Flash can still handle the task with precision, demonstrating that a rapid prototyping tool doesn’t have to compromise code quality.