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Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Moondream 3.1: API price, context & features · api14

Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Moondream: Moondream 3.1

A side-by-side comparison of Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite ($1.05 / 1M tokens) and Moondream: Moondream 3.1 ($1.05 / 1M tokens) using current USD prices and capabilities from the api14 catalog. Both run through the same OpenAI-compatible API.

Specifications

	Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite	Moondream: Moondream 3.1
Provider	Google	Moondream
Input	$1.05 / 1M tokens	$1.05 / 1M tokens
Output	$8.75 / 1M tokens	$8.75 / 1M tokens
Cache read	$0.11 / 1M tokens	-
Cache write	$0.29 / 1M tokens	-
Reasoning	$8.75 / 1M tokens	-
Audio input	$1.05 / 1M tokens	-
Image	$0.000001 / image	-
Web search	$49.00 / 1K searches	-
Context window	1,048,576	32,000
Max output	65,536	4,096
Input	text, image, video, file, audio	text, image
Output	text	text
Tool calling
Structured output
Reasoning control
Added	Jul 21, 2026	Oct 15, 2026

Key differences

Both have about the same input price.
Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite reads 32.8× more context (1,048,576 tokens).
Only Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite supports tool calling.
Only Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite supports structured JSON output.
A request with 1,000 input and 500 output tokens costs $0.00542 with Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and $0.00542 with Moondream: Moondream 3.1.

In depth

Google Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is a text model from Google, listed under the model id google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite. Moondream 3.1 is a text model from Moondream, listed as moondream/moondream3.1-9b-a2b. Both are served through api14 as OpenAI-compatible endpoints, so from a client's point of view they are two entries in the same model list rather than two different SDKs. The two providers sit in different parts of the market: Google ships a general purpose multimodal model, while Moondream ships a compact vision-focused model.

The clearest split is context and input types. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts text, image, video, file and audio as input and produces text, with a context window of 1,048,576 tokens. Moondream 3.1 accepts only text and image as input, also producing text, with a context window of 32,000 tokens. So Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the one with the bigger context by a wide margin, and it is the only one of the two that can take video, audio or arbitrary files. On price the two are about the same for both input and output, so cost is not the deciding factor here. On parameters, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the only one of the two that supports tools and structured outputs, and it exposes a wider set of controls including response_format, seed, stop, tool_choice, reasoning_effort and structured_outputs. Moondream 3.1 supports a smaller set: include_reasoning, max_completion_tokens, max_tokens, reasoning, temperature and top_p. Reasoning support is not a meaningful differentiator between them based on what is listed.

For practical selection, reach for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite when the task involves long documents, mixed media, or anything that needs function calling or a JSON schema enforced on the output. A pipeline that ingests a recorded meeting, a PDF and a screenshot in the same request, or one that must call tools and return structured data, belongs on Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite. Reach for Moondream 3.1 when the job is narrower: text plus images, short prompts, and a simple text answer, with no need for tools or structured output. Image captioning, visual question answering over a single picture, or a lightweight classification step over an image and a short instruction are the kinds of calls where its smaller surface area is enough. If your inputs fit inside 32,000 tokens and you never need tools or a schema, either model will do the job, and the choice comes down to which one you already have wired up.

Calling either model through api14 works the same way. You send a request to the OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint with your api14 key, and the only thing that changes between the two is the model id string: google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite, or moondream/moondream3.1-9b-a2b for Moondream 3.1. The message format, the authentication header and the response shape stay identical, so you can swap the id in a config value or an environment variable and leave the rest of your code untouched. Keep in mind that the parameter sets differ, so a request that sets tool_choice or response_format will work on Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite but not on Moondream 3.1, and a request that sets max_completion_tokens is valid on Moondream 3.1. If you want one code path for both, stick to the parameters they share, such as temperature, top_p, max_tokens and reasoning.

Switch with one string

Both models use the same endpoint and request shape. Change the model value from "google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite" to "moondream/moondream3.1-9b-a2b" and prompts, streaming and tools keep working.

Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite details & playground →Moondream: Moondream 3.1 details & playground →

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: "https://api14.com/api/v1",
  apiKey: process.env.API14_API_KEY,
});

const result = await client.chat.completions.create({
  "model": "moondream/moondream3.1-9b-a2b",
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "Explain vector databases in two sentences."
    }
  ]
});
console.log(result.choices[0].message.content);

Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Moondream: Moondream 3.1

Specifications

Key differences

In depth

Switch with one string

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