Model comparison
Cohere Command A+ vs Gemini 3.6 Flash
Cohere against Google, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.
Catalog record checked September 5, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below
Cohere
Cohere Command A+
Balanced · Open weights
Gemini 3.6 Flash
Balanced
| Specification | Cohere Command A+ | Gemini 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Cohere | |
| Tier | Balanced | Balanced |
| Context window | 128K | Winner: 1M |
| Max output | Not verifiedUnverified | 64K |
| Input / 1M tokens | $0.80 | Winner: $0.75 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Winner: $3.20 | $3.75 |
| Weights | Open | Closed |
| Parameters | 218B total / 25B active (sparse MoE) | Not disclosedUnverified |
| Reasoning levels | low, medium, high | low, medium, high |
| Modalities | text | text, image, video, audio, pdf |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Not disclosedUnverified |
| API model id | CohereLabs/command-a-plus-05-2026 | gemini-3.6-flash |
| Released | May 20, 2026 | July 21, 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | 43 | Winner: 54 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-07) | Not verifiedUnverified | 78 |
| DeepSWE 1.1 (2026-07) | Not verifiedUnverified | 48.6 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (2026-08) | Not verifiedUnverified | 51.2 |
Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
- 2026-08: Google DeepMind model evaluation report (vendor, HLE-Verified full set)Frontier-knowledge ceiling: extremely hard multi-domain questions written to be near-impossible without deep expertise. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Subset/tool configurations (text-only vs with-tools) differ between vendors and materially change scores; must match configuration to compare.
- 2026-07: Google DeepMind model evaluation report (vendor, quoting Datacurve leaderboard; 3.7 report shows 49 — rounding conflict preserved)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
Pricing tiers: Cohere Command A+: Azure-hosted Global rate $0.80/$3.20 per MTok (effective 2026-07-01; Data Zone $0.88/$3.52). Cohere-direct publishes no per-token price: open weights (Apache 2.0), a free rate-limited trial API, and Model Vault/enterprise licensing. Cohere calls it the last model in the Command A family. 218B/25B active sparse MoE. · Gemini 3.6 Flash: $0.75/$3.75 per MTok (intro through 2026-12-31, then $1.50/$7.50). Multimodal input.
Cohere Command A+
Command A+ is Cohere's open-weight (Apache 2.0) 218B/25B sparse MoE for enterprise use.
Best for
- Open-weight deployments
- Enterprise RAG
- Tool use
Watch out
The $0.80/$3.20 figure is the Azure-hosted rate, not a Cohere-direct price — Cohere itself sells licenses and a free rate-limited trial, so budget by deployment path.
Gemini 3.6 Flash
Gemini 3.6 Flash is Google's balanced multimodal Flash tier with a 1M-token context.
Best for
- Multimodal pipelines
- High-volume processing
- Video and audio input
Watch out
Superseded by 3.7 Flash on quality; still a solid mid-tier.
When the cheaper one wins
Cohere Command A+ is cheaper on output at $3.20 per million tokens against $3.75 for Gemini 3.6 Flash — about 1.2×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.
Run the model pickerEvidence confidence: High
How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.
- Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
- 3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, parameter count.
- 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
- Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 6 days ago.
- Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.
Source receipts
Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.
- Cohere Command A+: Azure Retail Prices API (Command A Plus Global $0.80/$3.20) (accessed 2026-09-04)
- Cohere Command A+: AzureSpeed — AI model pricing tracker (same figures) (accessed 2026-09-04)
- Cohere Command A+: Cohere — pricing (no per-token price for current Command generation) (accessed 2026-09-04)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: Google — Gemini 3.6 Flash (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: Google Cloud Gemini pricing (accessed 2026-08-29)
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Diving deeper on one model? Cohere Command A+ · Gemini 3.6 Flash
Common questions
Cohere Command A+ vs Gemini 3.6 Flash
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is Cohere Command A+ or Gemini 3.6 Flash cheaper for input?
Gemini 3.6 Flash is cheaper at $0.75 per million input tokens, against $0.80 for Cohere Command A+ — roughly 1.1× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Cohere Command A+ has tiered pricing: Azure-hosted Global rate $0.80/$3.20 per MTok (effective 2026-07-01; Data Zone $0.88/$3.52). Cohere-direct publishes no per-token price: open weights (Apache 2.0), a free rate-limited trial API, and Model Vault/enterprise licensing. Cohere calls it the last model in the Command A family. 218B/25B active sparse MoE. Gemini 3.6 Flash has tiered pricing: $0.75/$3.75 per MTok (intro through 2026-12-31, then $1.50/$7.50). Multimodal input.
Is Cohere Command A+ or Gemini 3.6 Flash cheaper for output?
Cohere Command A+ is cheaper at $3.20 per million output tokens, against $3.75 for Gemini 3.6 Flash — roughly 1.2× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Cohere Command A+ has tiered pricing: Azure-hosted Global rate $0.80/$3.20 per MTok (effective 2026-07-01; Data Zone $0.88/$3.52). Cohere-direct publishes no per-token price: open weights (Apache 2.0), a free rate-limited trial API, and Model Vault/enterprise licensing. Cohere calls it the last model in the Command A family. 218B/25B active sparse MoE. Gemini 3.6 Flash has tiered pricing: $0.75/$3.75 per MTok (intro through 2026-12-31, then $1.50/$7.50). Multimodal input.
Which has the larger context window, Cohere Command A+ or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
Gemini 3.6 Flash accepts 1M tokens against 128K for Cohere Command A+. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Do Cohere Command A+ and Gemini 3.6 Flash support the same reasoning levels?
Yes — both accept the same effort settings: "low", "medium", "high". Higher effort costs more and takes longer, so start low and raise it only where output quality actually improves.
Should I use Cohere Command A+ or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
Both sit in the balanced tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Cohere Command A+ suits open-weight deployments; Gemini 3.6 Flash suits multimodal pipelines.
Can I self-host Cohere Command A+ or Gemini 3.6 Flash?
Cohere Command A+ publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Gemini 3.6 Flash is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.
Next step
Choosing between them
The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.
- Input price: Gemini 3.6 Flash costs $0.75 per 1M tokens versus $0.80 for Cohere Command A+ — a 1.1x difference at the headline tier.
- Context: Gemini 3.6 Flash takes 1M against 128K for Cohere Command A+ — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
- Measured capability: Gemini 3.6 Flash leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 54 to 43 (measured 2026-08-14).
- Deployment: Cohere Command A+ publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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