Gemini may trade deeper agent work for faster, cheaper runs
Gemini’s current weakness may be the lack of a stronger long-. OpenAI and Anthropic appear to offer higher-effort thinking options for hard tasks, while Gemini seems limited to a level similar to what 2.5 Flash and 2.5 Pro already had by default.
The concern is that Gemini 3 added ways to think less and save money, rather than ways to think more and improve hard-task . In , or 3.5 Pro may finish the same task in 5 to 10 minutes, but with many errors or without truly completing it.
By comparison, GPT 5.5 in Codex and Opus 4.8 in Claude Code may spend up to 30 minutes on a task, suggesting a deeper work mode. is mentioned as a possible related feature, but it seems different from the higher s offered by other companies.
Key points
- Gemini may lack a very high-effort for difficult .
- The concern is that Gemini 3 focuses more on reducing thinking cost than raising peak .
- and 3.5 Pro in are described as faster but more error-prone.
- GPT 5.5 in Codex and Opus 4.8 in Claude Code are compared as slower but possibly more thorough.
- Agent cost should include failed attempts and retries, not only the price of one run.